The Riddle of Steel: Director's Cut
by Chuckman
Summary: Grant me one request! Grant me REVENGE!
1. Chapter 1

The Following work of fiction incorporates the works of Hideaki Anno, the wonderful people at Studio Gainax and Studio Khara, and of Robert E. Howard, with respect to John Millius and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

* * *

Hither came Conan, black haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirths, to tread the jeweled throne of Earth under his sandalled feet.

-Robert E. Howard, _The Phoenix on the Sword_

* * *

Nothing on earth consumes a man more quickly than the passion of resentment.

-Wilhelm Friedrich Nietzsche, _Ecce Homo_

* * *

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

-Ancient Klingon proverb

* * *

It was raining the day the boy was delivered unto the old man.

Every rain in Japan after the impact was a summer rain, falling on land parched by summer endless. The water that fell was never cool, but warm as the air. He was standing on the train platform, waiting, and he was six years old. His mother was dead and when she went away, she took the world with her. The vibrant city of his youth was replaced by the muted greens of the countryside, tamped down and grayed by the rain. His hair, black, soaked with water and ran through, down over his forehead and his face, where blue eyes flashed with the lightning. His suitcase rested next to him. It was forced open by the weight of its contents, and bits of cloth peaked out from the opening, now wicking moisture into the inside.

The train was met at the station by a bus and the bus was the one he was waiting for. His father made him repeat the number even as he was weeping on the platform at home. Two men in dark clothes watched him on the train but left him here once it stopped. He dragged his now heavy, sodden clothes down the platform to the bus. The driver stared through him, showing neither concern nor impatience. Drag-thump, he pulled the heavy container of sodden clothes up the steps into the bus and fished in the pocket of his trousers for the pass he'd been given. It was wet from the rain but the driver took it without saying anything and scissored the doors closed.

The rain drummed on the roof of the buss and clattered down the sides, and when the lightning came it painted the empty interior in stark relief. His rear end was cold and sore from sitting in sodden trousers and he was cold, now, the water having pulled the heat from his skin. He ran his fingers through his hair and flicked his fingers out, and the water hit the floor with a wet slap.

"Don't do that," said the bus driver.

The boy said nothing as the bus rumbled on. It came to a slow, squeaking stop, paused for only a few seconds, and rolled on. The boy stood up to wait for the next stop, where he would leave the bus behind. He wondered what would happen if he didn't get off, if the bus driver would care or leave him until he completed his route and pulled back into the bus yard, if he would leave him there again and again, day after day, until he withered away to nothing and there was only a ghost on an empty bus. He was sure no one would care. Mother was dead and father sent him away.

In that moment he decided he hated his father.

The bus stopped. He dragged the suitcase along the center of the floor, and again the driver paid him no mind, not even looking as he half pulled, half dropped it down the steps and into the gutter. The bus stop was alone in trees and was a cave of wood, pressure treated and gray, like old bones. Long worn gaps in the boards of the roof let water in, making it poor shelter but better than the outside. Shinji stood inside, not wanting to risk a splinter in his thighs on the old bench. The bus rumbled away as the rain picked up, falling in sheets now, disappearing until it was only a set of taillights, like the eyes of a monster lurking in the darkness.

It may have been a minute, or an hour, when the old man arrived. Shinji was staring at the floor, watching the mud rise up over the edge of the boards and start to spill over, lapping at the rim like ocean waves. It would file into the cracks, growing thicker each time, until eventually it would form a thick enough layer for the water to flow in and flood the enclosure.

The old man was wearing a yellow rain slicker. Only his face was visible, old and gray and lined. His eyes were milky.

"You are Shinji Ikari."

Shinji nodded. With each dip of his head, he felt the tears building behind his eyes, trying to spill out.

"If something happened to your mother and father, I was to see to your care and education. Follow me."

Shinji looked around.

"Do I have a raincoat?"

"Do you?"

He shook his head.

"You'll be wet, then."

Shinji pulled his suitcase to the edge of the shelter where the water was rising, and lifted it. He waddled along behind the old man, the weight of the suitcase trying to drag itself down into the mud. After a time he stopped and switched around to the other hand, but the old man did not slow. He continued walking, stooped and the only source of color in the gray world of rain, shuffling through the mud from one foot to another.

Shinji's foot hurt. There was mud in his shoes. The roads here were not paved, and the water slashed into them and made an endless river of slowly flowing mud. His feet began to slip, sliding backwards under him and making his stomach ball up with fear he would fall. The old man continued at his steady pace, widening the gap between them, not looking back.

His strength gave out, and he started dragging the suitcase through the mud. A caked ring of filth accumulated around the front of it as it pulled a channel in the wet ground. Shinji had to plant his foot for each step and push forward to keep it moving, and each time his foot slipped. The gap between him and the old man widened, and soon he was only a thin line of yellow in the growing dark, a single brush stroke on a broad canvas, only truly visible in the flashes of lightning.

Shinji pulled, stopped, pulled, stopped, no longer caring that he was grinding mud into his clothes. He took step after laborious step even as the ground began to arch upwards. He sucked in a breath and coughed at the inhaled rain. His lungs were coals in his chest and his legs felt like springs, pulled to their limit and then pressed too tight. He had to close his eyes to take another step, and through the rain running over his eyes and the mist and the dark, he couldn't see the old man at all.

He fell.

His knees sank in the mud, and he put his hands out to steady himself. Mud slipped between his fingers, caked into his knuckles and slid under his fingernails. He got one foot under himself but it slipped out when he tried to stand, and then he tried again, finally managing to get up. He was sodden, covered in filth, and shivering. He turned around and saw the suitcase. It had burst open, spilling its contents over the road. Slowly, he gathered up the rags and let them rest on one side of the open case, until he could pull it across the mud, like a sled.

Walking backwards, he worked his way up the hill, step after step, using the road he left behind him to judge the cures and rises so he knew where to put his feet. Now he could remember only when he'd last slept, and the last time his belly had been full. Each step cost him a ragged gasp, and at last he fell backwards, losing his grip on the suitcase, and fell into the mud. His head hit the ground with a wet slap. He closed his eyes, and swallowed, and hoped the old man had left him to die.

When he woke, the ground was sliding beneath him. He gasped and spat out a mouthful of mud, and it ran down the old man's back. He was over the old man's shoulder in a fireman's carry, his arms hanging down. He was too tired to speak or squirm, and simply watched the ground beneath him sway. The old man carried his closed suitcase in his other hand, and Shinji let out a breath of relief. The rain was beginning to relent, going from heavy slashing sheets to heavy drops that ran down his back under his shirt and made him shiver. A chunk of mud slid out of his hair and hit the ground behind the old man with a slap.

It felt like the trip took forever. The old man turned off the road up a narrower path that was not much of a path at all, folding and rolling between trees. The old man had to turn sideways, now and then, to walk between them. The path turned down a hill, zig-zagging this way and that, and in places old boards were fixed to it to give purchase to walk in the rain, such was the slope. The old man grunted as he came to the bottom of the hill and walked along the path to the house.

The house was barely deserving that name. The sides were open, making it mostly a pavilion, a low roof held up by timbers. It was shored up well, though, and offered ample shelter against the rain. It was bigger than it looked at first. The whole area was a network of wooden roofs and tarps stretched out with rope. Under one was a kitchen, such as it was, with a large fire pit and an assortment of cast iron dutch ovens and a pile of cut wood, covered in another tarp. Some of the small structures were more enclosed. Under one of the roofs was a pair of hammocks.

The old man let the suitcase thump to the floor under the widest roof, and then gently put Shinji down on a bench, letting him lean against the rough wooden table. He carried over a lantern, set it on the table, and looked down at him.

"You're filthy. Wait here."

The old man disappeared into the darkness and returned, carrying a bucket. Without ceremony, he dumped it over Shinji's head, washing away the mud. His clothes were still stained with it, but he felt less weighed down and grubby.

"Bath, later. When the rain stops."

Shinji looked around.

"You're my teacher?"

The old man stopped. "No. I was your mother's teacher, once."

Shinji looked down at his hands. They were shaking. He put them under his armpits.

"I'm scared."

"You should be."

The old man appeared in front of him.

Slowly, he removed his hat. He was old, worn looking. His hair was silvery grain, and there was a thin scar that ran along the side of his head. He pulled the rain coat he wore away, and let it flop on the concrete pad. Shinji was beginning to think this place was not the house he was meant to live in. The old man was wearing fatigues, old and faded. There was a nametag on his left breast, and it read FUYUTSUKI.

"Are you Fuyutsuki?" Shinji said, dumbly.

"Yes," said the old man.

"You said you were a teacher. Why are you wearing army clothes?"

"I was in the army. After Second Impact, everyone was in the army."

Shinji watched him as he moved to a heavy locker set up at the corner of the shelter. He opened it, retrieved a can, and then opened it with a small, old fashioned can opener from his pocket. From inside the locker he produced a spoon, and carried the can to where Shinji sat. He thrust it out to him. Beans.

Shinji took a bite. "It's cold."

"No fires, now. They'll be looking for us."

The old man sat down in front of him, folding his legs under his body. He was wiry, the skin of his arms loose, from lost weight, but he had a deep chest. Shinji looked at the bruise along his jawline, but said nothing. He looked down at the can of beans, lifted some onto the spoon, and took a bite.

"You noticed the bruise."

Still eating, Shinji nodded. He was hungry, and the beans weren't _that_ cold.

"I killed the bus driver."

He almost dropped the beans.

"Are you going to kill me?"

"No. Eat."

Shaking, glancing from the can to the old man's face, Shinji continued to spoon cold beans into his mouth, feebly chew, and swallow. The rain had almost stopped, now, and its remnants pattered down into the earth around the shelter.

"I haven't been a teacher for ten years," said the old man, watching him eat. "I will be again. You are my new student."

"What do you teach?" said Shinji, his eyes flicking to the treeline around the camp.

"You're thinking about escaping."

Shinji froze.

"You might as well scream it. I can read it in your expression."

"I wasn't," Shinji lied.

"I am going to teach you everything you need to know."

Shinji scraped out the bottom of the can, making a cold rasping sound of metal on metal, and swallowed the last of the beans. The old man took the can and spoon from him and walked it off, somewhere, and quickly reappeared.

"Your father did not send you to me."

Shinji swallowed again, and continued to stare out into the dark. His eyes were beginning to adjust to the lack of light, and the trees stood our more strongly now, lines of gray in the darkness.

"You… you kidnapped me?"

"No," said the old man, as he stood up again. "I rescued you. They had a plan for you."

"A plan?"

"You wouldn't understand. You're too young. When you're old enough, I will teach you."

"Teach me?"

"The Scenario," said the old man, "and your place in it."

Shinji looked out at the dark. The old man stepped out into it, out of the pool of light from the lantern, and returned a moment later holding soap and a towel.

"Come with me."

Shinji stood up and followed him, dragging his feet. The old man walked through the darkness, under a tarp, along a path of boards fixed in the ground. Shinji glanced to either side, the darkness a solid wall pressing in on him. There was another lantern in the darkness, beside a metal tub filled with water. Shinji touched the surface. It was cold.

"You will clean yourself. I will return."

"Where are you going?"

The old man stopped, without turning. "Are you afraid of the dark?"

"Yes."

"There's nothing out here worse than me."

When the old man was gone, Shinji took off his clothes and climbed into the tub. He ended up standing in it, throwing water over himself and rubbing the bar of soap to scrape off the muck. Eventually, he was standing knee-deep in dirty water. He stepped out of it and found there was a towel lying on a crate, and dried himself. Under the towel was a shirt like the old man wore. Considering the condition of his own clothes, Shinji had little choice but to put it on. It hung down to his knees. There were no shoes or socks to put on.

"Over here," the old man called, form the darkness.

Shinji looked around, then gingerly put his bare foot on one of the boards. It was rough under his skin. He stepped from board to board, working his way towards the sound of the old man's voice. He came to another pavilion, surrounded by mosquito netting. The old man parted it and Shinji walked inside, onto a cool concrete pad. The old man lifted him and put him in a hammock suspended between the two posts of the shelter. He was amazingly strong.

There was no pillow. The cloth was not rough but not smooth, either. He had no choice but to turn sideways in the hammock and lay there. From the drag up the hillside, he was exhausted, and he felt the weight of fatigue on him when he was actually lying down. His surprise at falling asleep almost registered before he fell under, the world swirling around him a bit as the hammock rocked gently back and forth.

He woke, without dreaming, to the sun peeking over the horizon, filtering through the trees. The world was strange now that he could properly see it without rain or darkness. The camp smelled of turned earth, and was even larger than he thought. The old man apparently slept under the roof of the pavilion, which was connected to others by paths of boards and tarps. It looked like he'd built it all himself. There was a small shack, and a long wooden structure with a high roof, surrounded by tarps. Shinji wondered what was in it.

The old man appeared, stripped to the waist in his green fatigue pants and bare feet. There were scars criss-crossing his back and chest. Shinji wanted to ask where they came from, but thought that might not be a good idea.

"I want to go home," he said quietly.

"You can't," said the old man. "Your mother is dead. Your father murdered her."

Shinji sat in the rocking hammock for a moment, more. The old man's unflinching eye watched him.

The first sob almost made him fall out of the hammock. He plunged his face into his hands and swept them upwards, grabbed a double fistful of hair, and pulled. His sob stretched into a gurgling whine before he drew in another breath, and his palms were wet with tears.

"I want my _mommy,"_ he cried.

He wept for what felt like hours. When he finally lifted his face from his hands, the old man was standing there staring at him. There was cloth folded over his arm. He tossed a pair of pants and a shirt at Shinji.

"I cleaned your clothes."

The garments flopped over the hammock. Shinji stared at them and sniffed. He tried to stifle a sob and it got out anyway, and his lips contorted as he tried to press them closed and failed.

The old man drew near to him, and he shied away, tilting the hammock. He put out a hand, reassuringly, and with the other reached into his pocket. He took out a folded piece of stiff paper and handed it to Shinji, who took it in his trembling hands. It was a photograph of a beautiful woman, holding a smiling child to face the camera.

Mother.

"Where did you get this?"

"I took the picture," said the old man.

Shinji looked at it, turned it in his hands. It was so hard to remember her face, her voice. Remembering how fuzzy it all was only made him curl on himself and sob again.

"Keep it," said the old man. "You have more claim to her than I do."

He waited while Shinji rocked back and forth in the hammock, staring at the picture and sobbing.

"Your father is a cruel man," the old man said, quietly. "He did not love your mother. He cared for her only because she made him happy. When you were born, he began to hate you for stealing her from him."

Shinji looked at him. "Is that true?"

"Yes."

He looked at the picture. "Did you love her?"

"Yes."

"Then why did you let my father marry her?"

"It was more important to me that she be happy. She was, for a time."

"Then what happened?"

"We murdered the world."

Shinji folded the picture again and held it for a while. The old man left him and he dressed, pulling on a pair of slacks and a white shirt, a school uniform. His shoes and socks were still missing. When the old man returned, Shinji asked of him,

"Where are my shoes?"

"No shoes," said the old man, pointing at his own feet, leather-soled and horn hard. "Don't need them."

Shinji looked up at him. "But my feet hurt."

"They'll stop. Follow me."

The old man turned without waiting for him and headed along the boards to the strange pavilion with the tarps, nimbly picking his way from board to board. Shinji followed, doing his best to keep up. The old man was faster than he should have been, and it was difficult. When he reached the other pavilion, he pulled the tarp aside and gestured for Shinji to enter.

He looked around inside. It was dark, lit by a single lantern. There were shelves and shelves of books, and even a computer. One end of the space was taken up by strange equipment. There was a heavy cage of square iron beams, and a bench with supports at one end. The old man had an array of long iron bars, and circular iron plates marked with numbers. He walked to the equipment, selected a bar, and set it on the floor. He then started putting plates on either end, the biggest of the selection, of which he had many. When he had four on either end, he beckoned Shinji forward.

"Lift it."

Shinji bent over and put his hands on the bar. It had rough spots on it, marked to grip, and just touching them hurt his skin. He curled his fingers around it and pulled.

"I can't," he said.

The old man motioned him back.

He stepped up to the apparatus, so that the bar touched his shins. He bent in a specific way, so his back was straight and his knees bent, and took a grip on the bar. He grunted and grimaced, the air from his breath blowing out the sides of his mouth as he stood up. The bar moved with him, and he raised it until he was standing. Corded muscle stood out all over his body, angling up to his neck and across his belly. He put the weight down with a great thump and stood over it, drawing in deep breaths.

"I can."

Shinji looked at it. "How did you do that?"

"Practice. I'm old. Soon you will be a young man, and you will do more than I ever could."

The old man knelt down, then, and gave the bar a heavy, open-handed slap. Shinji flinched.

"There is one thing in this world you can trust, Shinji. Not man, not woman, not beast."

He glanced down at the long bar.

"This. This you can trust."

* * *

Shinji watched the deer.

It moved beneath the tree, lazily poking along the streambed. Shinji clung to the branch, pressing his body into the rough bark. In his left hand he held the spear, a short half of wood with the old man's survival knife bound to the end. The deer did not see him, and did not look up. He slipped forward on the branch, positioning himself just above it, and it stopped. Its head rose and its ears turned in all direction while it stared dumbly, scanning the woods ahead for the source of the sound.

A wordless scream escaped his lips as he slid off the branch and dropped. He folded the spear out in front of him and held it two-handed in his fists, and it was the point of the spear that struck the animal first. It sheared down along its length, drawing out a long wound. Warmth sprayed over him, and he slid down the animal's flank as it spasmed. His eyes went wide and he barely rolled out of the way of slashing hooves, mixing the gore that coated his arms with wet mud. The deer screamed, strangely human, and darted forward.

The old man stepped out of the brush and opened its neck with a single stroke of his sword. Old and battered, the blade was of recent make, the kind that had been mass produced for officers, with a minimalistic, practical grip and unpolished blade. It had none of the craftsmanship of older blades. It was like the man who wielded it. The old man flicked the blade, whipping it in the air to an abrupt stop as he turned the blade, so the long line of red that coated it slashed out onto the branches with a wet slap. He then slid it back into the green metal scabbard that held it, shoved through his belt.

Shinji approached the deer. The old man knelt beside it, whispering.

"Are you praying?"

The old man ignored him.

"I thought you didn't believe in God."

He stood up. "I don't. I was apologizing to her."

"Why?"

"Long before men lived in cities or grew crops on farms, our ancestors on another continent prayed to the creatures they slew for food. The honored them and called them brothers."

He glanced off into the distance. "The people out there murder them in factories and buy their bodies wrapped in plastic."

Shinji nodded. "I understand."

"Do you?"

He pulled the spear free, and started unwrapping the cord that held the knife in place. Shinji took it and slipped the blade into his belt sheath, and threw the stick aside. The old man knelt down, drew some cord from where it was wrapped on his belt, and began tying it around the deer's back legs.

"Help me pull it."

Together, they drug it up the hillside and then along the path to the camp. When they arrived, the old man threw the rope over a branch, and motioned for Shinji to take it. The boy took it, turned, and held it over his shoulder while walking forward, gradually pulling the deer upwards.

"It's too heavy."

"Grow stronger."

He redoubled his efforts and pulled, and the deer rose up until its forelegs and head dangled, and blood ran down and mixed with the earth. When it was a few feet high, Shinji tied the rope off on another tree and returned. The old man took Shinji's knife and sawed the head off, cutting through the joints of the neck, the tough meat and sinew, until it fell. Then, he ran it up the deer's belly, sliced it open, and spread it apart.

"Watch."

The old man wedged the blade into the animal's ribs, breaking them from its collarbone. Shinji felt a thickness at the back of his throat, but watched. The sounds made him flinch as the old man forced the deer's body apart, spreading the bones with his hands while he held the knife in his teeth. He reached up into the deer's body with the blade, cut at the viscera, and the lungs and heart and guts all came out in a great wet slap.

Shinji bolted to the nearest tree, bent double, and vomited.

"Come back."

He stood up, wiped the last of the bile from his face, and walked back to the old man.

"You have blood on your face."

Shinji blinked.

"Help me."

Wincing, and looking away at times, Shinji helped the old man, pulling on the skin or holding a limb where he directed, denuding the deer of its skin. The old man took it, folded it so the bloody side was in, and threw it over the branch.

"Go and get the cheese cloth."

Shinji did as he was told, stopping first to clean the blood from his hands and arms with soap and water, very thoroughly. He brought the bolt of cloth with him, and when he arrived, the old man was holding the first cut of meat. Together, they wrapped it very carefully, and Shinji carried it to the cooler. This went on until the last cut, which would not fit in the container. They wrapped it, and the old man motioned for Shinji to carry it to the fire pit.

"The backstrap," said the old man. "The best part. We will eat it first."

"What about that stuff?" said Shinji glancing at the gut pile, and the skin.

"The offal, we leave outside the camp for scavengers. They need to eat, too. The skin, we will keep."

Shinji carried the meat to the pit, while the old man attended to the rest. He came bearing the skin folded over his arms, and the animal's severed head. He tossed it on the ground with a thump and carried the skin off.

Shinji laid out the meat on their table, near the fire pit, in the open space at the center of the camp. The coals were low but still hot, and so he took some kindling from the pile and carefully tossed it into the center, where it began to catch, and then layered split logs over it, wincing and pulling his hand back from the heat while the old man cleaned and prepared the meat, running it through with a spit. When it was skewered, the old man laid it out on the forks that held the spit, over the heat of the fire. The smoke embraced it, and hissed with joy at dripping fat.

The old man sat down. He'd cleaned himself, and carried over a pot of water from the rain catch. He put the head in it and carefully set it inside the broad fire ring, close enough to the coals to draw heat but not enough to deform the metal. He turned the spit now and then, looking over the flames at Shinji in his quiet, unfocused way.

"What are you doing with the head?"

"I will clean it, and you will keep the skull of your first kill."

"I didn't kill it."

"Yes, you did," said the old man, gazing into the fire. "It was your stroke that condemned it to die. It would not have survived that wound. I only corrected your mistake, and gave it a clean death."

"How did you learn to use the sword like that?"

"A man I knew in the army taught me."

"Will you teach me?"

"When you are ready."

The old man pulled the sword out and looked at it, turning it in his hands. The blade caught the flame, and spread the light of the fire out across the camp as the sun drew near the horizon.

"I have heard a legend," said the old man. "In the beginning, before men, giants lived in the earth, and stole the enigma of steel from the gods. The gods struck down the giants, and fire and water fell on them, and the giants were destroyed."

Shinji watched the light playing along the blade.

"In their rage, the gods forgot the secret of steel, and left it lying on the battlefield. Those who found it were not gods, not giants, but men. Just men."

Slowly, the old man sheathed the blade again. "You must learn its discipline, Shinji. You must answer the riddle of steel."

When the meat had cooked, the old man piled it high onto a plate for Shinji, leaving not as much for himself. Shinji ate it hungrily with his hands, for the hunt and the dressing of the game had drained him, and he felt weak until he began to eat, slurping down the long slices of hot meat hungrily. It tasted of blood and fire, salt and smoke.

When he was finished, the old man helped him to clean the plates, and together they lowered the cooler with ropes into the pit where it was kept, which the old man covered with a straw mat. It was cool in the Earth, and the meat would keep there for a time without being salted. When all was done, Shinji was left to clean himself and his garments, alone.

When he was dressed again, the old man returned.

"Come with me."

Together, by light of the lantern, they walked to the hut with the books and the weights. Shinji sat down inside, as the old man pulled a book from the shelf.

"Tonight, we begin learning algebra."

"But I'm too young for that," said Shinji. "in school, we-"

The old man silenced him with a blank look. "You are Yui Ikari's child. Those things don't have any meaning for you."

Drawing on the concrete floor with chalk, the old man began to teach him. They would sit long into the night, discussing the figures scratched out on the floor, the old man reasoning with him over the meaning of the variables, explaining the relationship with the symbols. Shinji listened, and repeated when bidden, often making mistakes, in time correcting them. The old man expounded on poetry, philosophy, and history. When the night was over, Shinji walked sleepily beside him to the hammocks, listening as he spoke of ancient warrior kings from halfway around the world, and their adventures.

He drifted into a dreamless sleep, swaying in the darkness. When he awoke, it was to the meaty thwack of a long dowel rod slapping into his stomach, pushing the breath from his lungs and drawing a groan.

"What was that?" said Shinji, grabbing the stick. He rolled onto his feet.

The old man had a stick of his own.

"Before you answer the riddle of steel, you must answer the riddle of wood," said the old man.

Shinji blinked.

"That was a joke. Defend yourself."

* * *

Shinji went wide with his swing, and the old man corrected him with a hard stroke to his hamstrings that sent pain jarring up his legs and knocked him off his feet, out of the hut where they practiced, and into the dirt. He rolled over quickly, bringing up the stick to cover himself, but the old man had paused to drink from his canteen.

"I don't need to kill you. I severed your hamstrings. You can't walk."

Shinji blew out a breath, and slowly stood up, leaning on the stick. His chest heaved and beads of sweat rolled down his forehead even as perspiration matted his heavy mane of long, black hair, making it cling to his neck and shoulders. The old man always looked the same, always totally calm even when stripped to the waist and holding a battered practice "sword", basically an old dowel rod.

"I'd start training you with live steel if I didn't think you'd kill yourself."

"Kill myself?" said Shinji. "You hit me, remember?"

"You gave me the opening. Your failing killed you, not my skill."

"What does that even _mean?"_

The old man lowered his canteen, letting it hang from the strap over his shoulder, and flipped the practice sword up to rest against his neck. "You must master yourself, and be in the moment. You think too much."

"I think too much?" Shinji panted, leaning against one of the posts holding the roof over their heads.

"You think about where to put your feet, and where my sword will go, and how you will strike me. To hit me you must think of none of these things, only desire the outcome and let your mind and your instincts guide you. You've been doing this for years. Stop trying to hit me, and _hit me._"

Shinji nodded, danced lightly back up into the hut, and squared himself up. He was almost as tall as the old man, now, and was starting to gain some meat of his own, his long limbs filling out with mass, his shoulders broadening and growing into carved stone from the sword practice and the weight training. He'd been with the old man for nearly seven years now, and could barely remember his time before. He could barely remember anything but rising, day after day, to be beaten bloody by an old man with a stick before studying calculus or Greek philosophy or the history of the ancient Sumerians, sometimes all at once.

Fuyutsuki avoided all ceremony, never bowing nor beckoning him to attack nor saying anything at all, he simply moved, a blur despite his age, his face set in concentration. Shinji barely turned his first attack, leaving himself open for the recovering swing, and barely dodged that, too. He took a solid hit on his upper arm that would flower into a bruise later, to hammer home the lesson. Lose an arm, lose your weapon, and you die. Every part of the body was equally vulnerable, concealing some weakness of the human machine. Pull the string in the right place, and the whole thing came tumbling down.

He focused, turning these thoughts from his mind as the old man renewed his attack, and he felt his face slacken. He watched the sword but also watched the world, watched the old man's muscles flow and bunch under his sallow skin, watching how the pull of his shoulders or the tightening of his stomach presaged a blow or indicated a feint. Shinji moved with him, not trying to batter past his defenses or even touch him, just keep up, moving in time with him. He almost forgot he was holding the practice sword.

For the first time, he saw the old man tense and start to sweat in the never-ending swelter, his movements becoming just slightly less fluid, a tiny bit less sure. Shinji continued to move, not worrying about making contact but focusing on the dance, the movement. Without quite realizing how, he saw something he had never seen before, and almost forgot to take advantage of it. He swung his sword wide and almost hit the old man's neck before he stopped himself, panting, eyes wide in shock.

"You killed me," the old man said, dryly.

Shinji started to grin. He felt the tap of a dowel rod on his own shoulder, just beside his neck.

"As did I, you."

Shinji snorted in annoyance, but grinned in spite of himself. The old man's face was a tight cipher, betraying only the slightest hint of approval in the gentle upturn of his chin, and the change in his eyes. Shinji felt elated, as if he were about to float away on the wind.

"Good," said Fuyutuski. "Good."

"Now what?" said Shinji, lowering his sword. A glance told him the sun had risen to mid-day.

"Walk with me," said the old man.

Shinji dutifully did as he was bidden, walking just behind and to the left of the old man, out of the hut, and out of their camp, into the forest. The mossy understory crushed beneath his feet and he felt the mud beneath his toes, and through it could feel the contours of the rock beneath it, singing to him in an ancient song that modern men who girded their feet had long forgotten. He kept pace with long, loping, irregular strides, not slowed down by his practice of carefully placing each footfall. The sun had long bronzed his skin, which he left exposed to the elements as much as possible.

"What are the Dead Sea Scrolls?" said the old man.

Shinji gazed into the trees, ever watchful for enemy or prey. He sniffed the air like a beast, seeking after the musk of deer, and listened for the movement of small things that yet bore meat. Always was he alert, always waiting.

"A set of religious texts discovered on the West Bank in 1947," said Shinji. "Gnostic texts from the Essenes."

"Very good," said Fuyutsuki, "That is what I told you. I was wrong."

"You lied," said Shinji.

"I concealed. Remember your study of philosophy, Shinji. Imagine, if you will, scientific proof of the existence of the soul, of the afterlife."

Shinji considered this for a moment, standing on a great upraised root as he leaned against a tree, watching the pockmarked horizon through the trunks of the forest.

"Applied metaphysics," said Shinji.

"Just so," said the old man, continuing his walk. "The true scrolls were discovered a year earlier, and the excavation of the Essene texts used to hide their removal and, eventually, translation. The scrolls were gathered and translated by a man named Lorenz Keel."

"Keel," said Shinji, dropping to the soft earth beside the old man, to follow him. "Who is he?"

"A man that you will have to kill, one day."

"I see," said Shinji.

The old man went on, his gaze becoming distant, fixed on a nothingness that remained far away.

"Keel toured the world as he translated the scrolls, gathering around him sympathetic minds in chemistry, physics, biology, mathematics, people who have been marginalized in their fields for some eccentricity or other. One of them was your grandfather, Yui's mother. To a one, they were all rich, and well connected."

"They led lives of leisure," Shinji surmised, "and that made them easily manipulated."

Fuyutsuki nodded. "Perhaps, or perhaps Keel simply directed his efforts more towards wealth and political or social connections than the truly _sharpest_ minds. "

"One of the people he approached was you?"

The old man shook his head. "No, not yet. He started his Society in the 1960's, drawing together his various contacts for the first time in Vienna, in a hotel. He swore them all to secrecy and unveiled his plan- they would gather the resources they needed by fabricating a secret society, the Society of the Soul, or Seele, and manipulating their personal connections to grow and empower it."

"I see," said Shinji.

The old man shook his head. "The Society is real, Shinji. Keel revived an ancient order, so ancient it was gone before Christ is said to have walked the Earth, before our people were even a people, wiped out for their heresy."

"Heresy?" said Shinji. "What heresy?"

The old man paused, and leaned on his sheathed sword like a cane, studying the angle of the sun. "The members of this sect eschewed the faiths of the ancient Near East for vastly different religion- one that spoke of a spherical Earth orbiting an unremarkable sun, and of life on other planets that deliberately seeded our world with life."

"The exobiotic theory," said Shinji. "You've mentioned this."

The old man smiled slightly, perhaps with an iota of pride. "Yes, but it isn't a theory. They were right, Shinji."

He blinked, and stood staring at the old man's gnarled back, noting how stooped he had become, lately. The old man took a slow breath, as if gathering strength.

"When the Earth's surface was still molten, the first Seed arrived. The ancients called it Lilith, but whether that is their term or that of the progenitors is unknown to us. It crashed into the Earth and in the process, sheared off the material that formed the Earth's moon."

"It must have been huge," said Shinji.

"Yes, and traveling very fast. The creation of a moon, I think, has something to do with the process. It protects the Earth from meteor impacts. In fact, I think this solar system was chosen because of the presence of large gas giants in the middle of the orbital plane, to sweep up cosmic debris and limit extinction level events."

"What about Alvarez' meteor, and the other strikes?"

"It's not a perfect system," said the old man, "and life survived, which is all that matters. Without Jupiter, life could not exist on Earth, or would have less of a chance, anyway."

Shinji nodded. "What is this seed?"

"The object was not the seed, but the vessel within which it crossed interstellar space. Whether its creators fashioned a hollow moon to carry it or the creature somehow does that itself, we don't know. The actual creature is an immense, inert giant made of a unique form of matter that is unstable in the quantum state, called particle-wave matter."

"So it still exists," said Shinji.

"Yes. The object and its inhabitant came to be buried beneath Hakone, over the course of millennia of tectonic shifts, but it isn't alone."

Shinji stopped. "What?"

"There are two seeds," said Fuyutsuki. "A second one, which the ancients termed Adam, landed at the Earth's southern pole, billions of years later, after life had already taken root."

"What happened?"

The old man looked up at the sky. "They battled, the giants of light. Two seeds were not meant to co-exist, and their creators made them different, incompatible. Somehow, Adam was contained, and locked away within its white moon, pinned in place with a giant alien weapon."

Shinji walked up to stand beside him. "I think I see where this is going."

"Keel launched expeditions to find the moons, and the creatures. The Black Moon was found first, but the nature of its hiding place prevented them from excavating it. The White Moon was found twenty years later, in the early nineteen-eighties. It had actually been discovered years before by an expedition from Massachusetts, but the expedition was a disaster. Most of the members died, and the rest went insane."

"That sounds promising," Shinji said, dryly. "Wait."

"Yes?" said Fuyutsuki, turning slightly.

"The gods left the enigma of steel lying on the battlefield…"

A small smile crept across Fuyutsuki's face. "And we who found it were not gods, not giants, but men. Just men."

"What did they want with it?"

"Godhood," said Fuyutsuki. "Keel convinced the others that Adam could be manipulated, harnessed and used by human beings to simultaneously force the evolution of the entire human species into gods, immortal and perfect."

"I take it didn't work," said Shinji.

The old man shook his head. "I was brought in around '96. At that time, your mother and father were graduate students working under me in the burgeoning field of applied metaphysics. Our research was meant to unravel the mystery of the absolute terror field."

"The what?"

The old man turned to him, and prodded his chest with a gnarled finger. "What holds you together?"

"The membranes of my cells, I suppose," said Shinji. "Chemical bonds."

"Partly," said Fuyutsuki, "but only partly. The science of the ancients is so advanced we can only use vague terms like soul to describe it. There is an essential _you_, Shinji, a being of light that exists within the physical shell, that comes directly from Lilith. Our research unraveled the means by which that soul can move on beyond the body as a coherent being."

"Proof of the afterlife," said Shinji.

"Of sorts. There was much we did not understand. Your father had already left by the time I discovered the truth."

"What truth?"

"That Seele had found Adam, and meant to awaken it. My experiments showed, only a few days before the experiment, that tampering with the AT Field in an attempt to transmigrate the soul results in the dissolution of both soul and body. It utterly destroys a person, rendering them down to their component materials."

Shinji balked, his eyes wide. "It's like a story," said Shinji. "Joseph Curwen."

"Yes," said the old man. "The problem is, the person can't be brought back. You can't rebuild what has been rendered down."

"What did you do?"

"I tried to alert the media, sent messages to the government. I was given this for my trouble." He traced his finger along the scar on his head. "Since I was no longer of a use to them, they tried to kill me."

"Then what?"

"Second Impact. The contact experiment took place not long after you were conceived, not long after your parents married, in September of that year. Seele had designed a device called an Entry Plug, partly my work, that was meant to insert a test subject into the creature in an attempt to merge with it. They were going to use one of the scientists'' own children first, then Keel himself, followed by the others. Join with it and become a god."

"What happened?"

"It activated, broke loose, and strode across the Antarctic, killing nearly everyone. In a panic, they tried to use the Lance to return it to its inert state. The end result was a gigantic explosion that instantly melted the entire ice cap, destroyed almost all of Seele's assets, and sent a tsunami roiling around the planet. The world was immediately plunged into chaos as every coastal area, where the bulk of humans live, was devastated."

"What about Keel? How did her survive?"

"Cowardice," said Fuyutsuki. "The tests were carried out by the most expendable of assets. Your father was merely en-route, or he would have been killed. Your mother was saved because her father's political connections were useful to Keel."

"I don't understand," said Shinji. "Shouldn't that have been the end of them?"

"Yes," said Fuyutsuki, "but Keel is a snake, and a madman. He convinced his followers that it was a sign from God, and that they had erred. He had plenty of evidence."

"Why?" said Shinji.

"When it exploded, the creature reverted to an embryonic state, not much bigger than a man's fist. Most of that material was ejected into space or around the Earth, in an abbreviated version of the creature's function. Keel taught his sycophants to believe that the creatures must be defeated in accordance with some damned prophecy he made up."

"Creatures?" said Shinji.

"Alternate evolutions," said Fuyutsuki. "Immensely powerful, merciless, inhuman. They will come and they will try to reunite with Adam, or with Lilith, maybe."

"What happens if they do that?"

"I don't know," said Fuyutsuki.

Shinji looked at him. "How do they mean to fight them?"

"I don't know that either," said Fuyutsuki. "When I left, it was to flee into the chaos of the post-Impact world. I spent some time in the National Defense Forces, eventually fleeing when things came back enough that I would be tracked down and liquidated. I built this camp up during those last months, spent my time preparing."

"How did you know to find me?" said Shinji.

"I saw your mother's death in a newspaper, and knew what your father would do, where he would send you."

"Do you know what killed her?"

"No," said Fuyutsuki. "What do you remember?"

Shinji looked into the distance, under the red disk of the sun. "Not much. I remember something, some kind of machine, but it looked like parts of it were alive. It had muscles, I remember, but there was no skin over them and its head was inside some kind of helmet. I don't think it even had legs. Mother, she… they put her in this suit, this skin tight suit. She squeaked when she walked and she hugged me before she left. There was a tube, a metal tube…"

"An entry plug," said Fuyutsuki, quietly. "They must have tried to clone it."

"I don't know, no one would tell me. Father never spoke to me after that, he just sent me away. Security men took me to the train station, rode with me out here."

He looked down at his hands, and slowly relaxed his fists, and his fingers trembled. He moved them to his side, trying to find his calm.

Fuyutsuki looked at him. "Your mother was chosen for a reason. It has something to do with you, I'm sure of it. There was a reason a child was chosen for the first experiment, but I don't know why. I never had access to that research, only guesswork."

"What was his name?" said Shinji. "The child they used."

"Her," said Fuyutsuki. "Her name is Katsuragi. Misato Katsuragi. She was about as old as you are now, when they took her to Antarctica. I can only wonder what they told her, what excuse her father used. How could a man do that to his own child?"

Shinji looked at him blankly.

"Why are you telling me all of this?"

The old man drew the sword with a quick _snickt _ of metal on metal, and studied the blade. "One day, you will return, and you will put this in your father's black heart for your mother, and for me, and for the world, but there is so much more you must do. An evil wizard commands them all, Shinji, and you will be his end."

"Return?" said Shinji.

"Yes," said Fuyutsuki. "It's almost time. The creatures are gestating somewhere, preparing themselves. They will return, and so must you. I don't know how Seele plans to defeat them, but you will find a place in that plan and turn it to your own ends."

"How will I do that?" said Shinji. "I'm just a boy."

"For now," said Fuyutsuki. He planted the blade of the sword in the ground and too a few steps across open ground. "Attack me, with your fists."

Without hesitation, Shinji darted forward, hands out, ready to grab the old man by the neck. Before he was even aware of what had happened, he was lying on the ground, his head shaking from the impact. Stars swam in his vision.

"You are younger than I am," said the old man, "and I think, stronger, yet I am standing and you have fallen. Master yourself, Shinji, and no matter what power is directed against you, it will be drawn into your control and directed to your ends, as I accepted your advance and turned it away from myself. Now get up and _hit me._"

* * *

By the light of a burning lamp, Shinji swayed in his hammock, bowing it with his weight as he curled around a book. He had to learn German to read it, and so he did, not without difficulty but never with the faintest decline in his resolve. The old man, who lay in his own hammock, watched him with lidded, rheumy eyes.

Marked on the wall of their hut were Shinji's days. Since he had arrived, each day was marked out with a cut in the posts, and each month with a deeper cut, and each year deeper still. He would be sixteen years old, soon, and the boy he had been when he first haltingly crept into this place, covered in filth and tears, was a distant memory buried under the weight of the riddle of steel. The many weight plates the old man had somehow accrued in his hideaway were all suspended from the end of the bar, now, and Shinji could move them all through sheer force of will, tear them from gravity's grasp, or as he fancied, push the Earth itself away with his feet.

He sometimes gazed at himself in wonder. He was lean and long of limb, and ropey muscles moved under his skin, folding and stretching it as he turned the pages of the book, in imitation of the way they bulged and strained under load. He could feel himself at ease, feel himself drawing in each breath, the slow pulse of his heart within his breast, beating hate for his father and the world that had inflicted its cruelties on him, and yet he was light, filled with air and feeling as though he might float away. It was almost time to go back.

The old man watched him in silence, until his eyes drifted closed. He held the sword across his chest.

Shinji flipped through the book. It was filled with handwritten notes, also in German, flowing, precise script of a scientist, but with a curious, feminine artistry to it. He turned a page and, curiously, found the text covered with a faded picture stuck there, rooted in the spine. He plucked it free and studied it in the light. His mother he knew, but the man that embraced her from behind was a stranger to him, a ghost of a happy man that was hidden under an indifferent beard and perpetual scowl before Shinji could remember. His father held his mother in the familiar, not quite sexual way that happy couples do, supporting her breasts with his forearms as she clutched at him and leaned into his embrace. Next to them, also smiling, was the professor, and he too was a ghost, a strange, jowly mockery of the lean forest creature Shinji knew. Beside him was a tall, lithe woman, red of hair and fair of skin, with piercing blue eyes that remained vibrant even as the ink that showed them faded. He turned the picture over.

"All the best,

-Kyoko".

Wondering at who the woman was, he decided to keep the picture, tucking it in beside the picture of his mother the old man had given him, seeing it too was faded with time. Shinji stared at it, closing the German book, studying the picture, drinking in the curve of his mother's jaw. The only thing that ever threatened to bring tears to his eyes was the realization that the image had become the subject, and he could no longer picture her but for the sake of the photograph. He could recall the feeling of hearing her voice but not the sound of it, the joy of pressing his face into her the feel of her embrace, the exultation of burying his face in her hair as she carried him on her shoulders but not the smell of it. He put the pictures away and turned to lie on the hammock.

In the morning, there would be practice, more sparring and forms with the sword and unarmed combatives, and then study of calculus and particle physics and all that the old man knew of the metaphysical field where he had pioneered, the science of the soul and of the fates. He dreamed that night, dreamed of raging monsters and giants on a field of battle, and the secret they forgot in their rage.

When he opened his eyes, it was not to the old man's prodding, but to the chirping of birds. Somehow, despite oversleeping, he felt more groggy than usual. He saw the old man lying in his hammock, and wondered how either of them could have missed the sunrise. Slowly, meaning to surprise him, Shinji stole to the concrete floor, cold under his spreading toes. On the balls of his feet, he lightly padded to the old man's side, and poked his shoulder.

Nothing happened.

Shinji reeled, almost falling. The old man's lips were blue, and he lay unnaturally slack. His arms had fallen to his side and with them the sword, which lay tangled in the strands of the hammock and, curiously, his fingers still curled about the battered hilt. Shinji shook him again, put his hands to his cold, papery flesh, and screamed.

Birds flapped in a rising torrent from the trees, and the sound of his anguished cry seemed to stir the trees themselves, such was their shaking from the crawling of small things. Shinji sank to his knees, burying his face in the old man's flank, shaking with confusion, fury and raw, unexpected terror. What was he going to do?

What was he going to do?

For a time, he leaned on his forearms, resting on all fours beneath the swaying dead man like a supplicant praying to an ancient idol. After a time he rose into a kneeling position, gazing on his fallen master. The old man kept no religion, held no faith, but knew many stories, many truths of ancient gods real and imagined, idols of the Hindus and the old Norse and his own people, and the creations of the old pulp authors he mingled with Shinji's education. Slowly, Shinji rose to his feet.

The old man had passed clutching his sword, small comfort to one who had died the straw death. At least he had a weapon in his hand.

Slowly, haltingly, Shinji worked loose the cold fingers grasping the hilt of the sword. The scabbard was hung with a strap, and slowly, he put it over his head and let it settle about his shoulders. He stood, breathing, feeling his sorrow press at the back of his eyes, staring at the old man's form. He seemed too small, now, too thin, as if something of great weight had slid off him in the night and crept away.

He couldn't say how long he stood in observation of the old man's frail form, wondering at its emptiness. Day may have slid into night before he moved, or it may have been a few minutes, but he understood what he had to do. He walked into the center of their camp and dragged the table where they ate to the very middle of it, and began working. He emptied the wooden tub where they bathed and cleaned their few clothes and slammed it into the table so hard it broke apart into splinters and boards. One by one, he gathered up every object, everything that would burn, books and clothes and the dowel rods and all of it, gathered it and piled up it up in the center of the camp.

When he had done that, he went into the hut, drew his sword, and slice the ropes suspending the old man's hammock. The corpse hit the ground with a meaty, hollow thud, and Shinji felt no shame, no reproach, no need to dishonor his teacher with foppery or ceremony. He easily heaved the old man up, shocked at how light he was, and bore him across the camp. He ascended the pile of wood he'd made and laid the old man out there, wrapped in the corded hammock, and strode down to the shed where the supplies were kept. There he took the red can of gasoline that had sat long unused, gathered from some place Shinji did not know when the old man disappeared one evening. He carried it across the camp, screwed the lid open and with a great flourish hurled a long stream of fuel across the old man's body.

From there he walked in slow circles, wetting the pyre with the gasoline, and let it stream out as he walked until the can was empty. He took some rags, some of the old man's clothes, and soaked them in gas before tying them around the wooden beams of their huts and pavilions. When that was done, before it had a chance to dry, he cleaned his hands in water from the simple pump the old man used, the one set in the ground at the edge of the camp, and took the lantern by whose light he had learned the terrible secrets of the men who ruled the world. He raised it high and whirled it, spun it in a circle until the glass cracked and it became a scything wreath of fire that circled him, and he hurled it into the old man's side.

The fire caught with a great thump, and spread out through the wood, crackling along the lines of gasoline, spreading from there. It moved across the ground in snaking trails until it caught the rags and they too went up, spewing bright orange flame. The heat was upon him all at once and he bore it, raising his arms high, sword held in one hand. He raised his arms high and cried out, not a scream of fright or agony but a roar of triumph. The old man was on his way to hell.

Others would be joining him, presently.

* * *

As the fire burned to embers, Shinji gathered what he had saved. It was all in a simple black bag, long enough to hold the sword. A few articles of clothing, the one book he'd kept, the pictures, and some neatly wrapped pieces of meat from their last kill. All of this he shouldered over a cloak, made from the skin of the first deer he'd so badly killed, the skull of which hung from his waist, surprisingly small to him, now. He looked around the camp for the last time, breathed in the hateful, charred wastes of his entire life, and started walking.

All these years later, the path was still known to him, somehow. He circled between trees, picked a route through the forest he'd never trod before, in a direction he had never sought, back to the world that had been so cruel to him. He knew he had succeeded when he first set bare foot to pavement, the feel of asphalt alien under the leathery soles of his feet. He stood on the edge of the road and turned to and fro, until he remember the direction. He had marched up, that night so long ago, and so today he would march down. Hanging in a small bag around his waist were the old man's minimal effects, among them a book inscribed with telephone numbers and a healthy ration of money, the bills tied up with strings. Though old and faded, it would serve.

He walked in his deer skin cloak and walked, the sun beating down him, but he felt free. Each step he took was a battle, each breath a victory. He drew nearer and nearer, and was unafraid. He expected to see the dilapidated hut where he'd first taken shelter that night, but found a newer structure, clean and brightly painted. Though he was innocent of the ways of the world, to an extent, he was wise enough to decide not to wait for the bus, after all, and continue down the road on foot.

The town where he had left the train was bigger than he remember. There was no one on the street, though, no one to gaze upon him as he walked down the center of the road. He remembered, vaguely, the sunset city of his youth, the world of Tokyo-3, but in truth even the simplest, rudest structure was all he knew, and to look on modern, prefabricated buildings set him to gawking in confusion. It was like walking in a long forgotten dream.

He saw something he only vaguely remembered, a telephone.

The phone, hidden inside a small alcove, demanded either coin or some sort of card jammed into its guts to work, unless he "called collect". Calling and collecting money seemed appropriate, so he adjusted his shoulder bag, pulled out the book of phone numbers, and thumbed to the page he wanted. The old man had underlined a number and marked with a legend reading, "When you return", probably in anticipation of this day.

Shinji touched the phone to his ear and listened to the hissing silence. He pressed the zero button and was shocked by another voice when a recording spoke to him, urging him in a pleasing, female tone to press certain buttons to make a collect call. He had forgotten what a woman's speaking voice sounded like. By the time he realized that the recording had hung up on him, it was too late, and he dialed again. This time, he managed to actually type out the number, following the prompt.

The phone rang.

"Who-"

The recording cut off the speaker. "This is a collect call. To accept, press 1."

"Accept it," Shinji snapped.

There was silence on the other end, followed by the hollow tone of a pressed button. The voice on the other ended sounded familiar to Shinji, because it sounded _like_ Shinji.

"Who is this?"

He drew in a quiet, even breath, so as not to betray his anxiety.

"Father?" he whispered.

* * *

_You have been reading_

**The Riddle of Steel: Director's Cut**

**_Chapter One: The Anvil of Crom_  
**


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer:

The Following work of fiction incorporates the works of Hideaki Anno, the wonderful people at Studio Gainax and Studio Khara, and of Robert E. Howard, with respect to John Millius and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

* * *

The last time Misato had ridden in an armored personnel carrier, she didn't like it any more than she did now. The seat seemed to small, even for her, and the ride was harsh- it bounced hard as if it had no suspension to speak of, yet at the same time swayed back and forth as if the suspension were too soft. Part of her questioned the need for this, the necessity of an armored column all to capture one man, but the Commander seemed to believe that Kozo Fuyutsuki was that dangerous, and the man had the Commander's son. Looking over both their dossiers, Misato couldn't believe the kid was still alive- nearly ten years in isolation in some backwater stretch of woods, hidden out in here in the cracks of civilization. Somehow, the place where the boy had told them they would find him had slipped in between those cracks, ended up undeveloped even as the post-Impact world stretched out to chase the wilderness out of its fallen buildings and put society back up on its feet.

The boy's dossier was short, half a page. It listed his birth mother, no picture, his father, a younger, strangely sunnier version of the Commander, and his vital statistics, which were particularly useless since he wasn't six years old anymore. Fuyutsuki's dossier was more complete. A professor of applied metaphysics, one of the first in his field, he had degrees in antiquities and was rumored to be unstable even before Second Impact, a brooding, contemplative man obsessed with his student, Yui Ikari. After Second Impact, he assaulted Gendo Ikari and fled after a Section 2 agent shot him, grazing his head. He didn't look particularly intimidating, but he was wanted for at least three murders, four if you included the driver of the bus Shinji had ridden the day he disappeared.

She bounced harshly as the APC drew to a grinding halt with the rumble of big, knobby tires. As she walked down the ramp in her brand new combat boots, which she would have no occasion to wear otherwise, she felt out of place among the small group of Section 2 agents in tactical gear, even though she too wore black fatigues, and even had her own helmet, ill-fitting as it was. She had to do up the strap around her chin to keep it from falling off, and felt ridiculous. She also had her service pistol in a shoulder holster. That wasn't so ridiculous.

The APCs had stopped where Shinji had nervously directed them over the phone, near the bus station where he'd apparently been dropped off before he vanished. The bus stop was clean and new, and there was nothing ominous about it on its own. The oppressive atmosphere came from the trees butting up behind it- it was hard to see ten feet into the foliage. In the world of perpetual summer, with no one to tend it any wild space was overrun by a choking thickness of plants that never needed to shrink from winter's cold again. She found herself staring in between the trunks, where a mist had gathered, when a hand fell on her shoulder and she turned around.

Misato, at least, looked comfortable in her fatigues. Ritsuko Akagi looked ridiculous. Her jacket was too big, the seams of the shoulders resting halfway down her arms. A big more-slope shouldered and a little less athletic than Misato, Ritsuko ended up looking a little dumpy in her outfit, and plainly resented the helmet she was carrying at her side. She had a gun, obviously a borrowed one, an automatic sitting in a shoulder rig like Misato's. Misato was at least willing to play along far enough to put her hair up and skip the makeup; Ritsuko looked like she'd spent a night on the town with her military boyfriend and was wearing his clothes to bed.

"So," said Ritsuko, "Now what?"

Misato looked around, pulling the folded map from the pocket over her breast, carefully scanning it while Ritsuko snorted. The Section 2 men gathered around.

"Okay," said Misato. "The kid called us last night. A few hours before, the satellite picked up a heat bloom nearby. We think it's the camp we're looking for."

She looked around uneasily as the agents shifted. Fully outfitted in tactical gear, they had on gas masks and helmets, and carried rifles and shotguns. A few had riot shields. Again, it all seemed a little extreme to deal with one guy. Misato pointed at the map.

"We're going to break into three teams," said Misato. "I'll take the main team here, straight in. The rest of you will move in teams of six around the sides, here and here," she pointed, "to watch our backs."

"What about me?" said Ritsuko.

"Stay here, and stay on the radio."

She expected a complaint, but Ritsuko hastily climbed back into the vehicle while Misato fixed up her radio set, clipping the transmitter to her waist, and the microphone to her epaulette. The Section 2 men did the same, arranging their gear while they milled around. Misato let them decide who would be on each team- she didn't know their names, anyway. Her field command was supposed to be giant robots, not a tactical team. She felt a little uneasy as she motioned for six of them to join her, and started walking in the direction of the camp on the map, checking her compass.

An agent with a riot shield took point, walking in front of her while she kept her eyes on the compass. She thumbed her mike.

"Mike check."

"You have to say 'over'," Ritsuko deadpanned.

"Over," Misato snapped.

"Team 2," and then a moment later, "Team 3."

She walked, and the small group fell into a steady rhythm, the regular click-clacking of their guns and gear oddly loud in the woods. She expected more noise, but there was almost nothing, not even the drone of cicadas. Step after step, she made her way into the woods, threading between the trees. Even with mister riot shield out front, she felt exposed. Their little column had to break up to move between the trees, which were so densely packed she almost had to turn sideways to work her way through them.

The radio crackled, and she froze.

"I saw something."

She thumbed her mike. "Who is this?"

"Team 2, on the southern approach. There's something out here."

"What do you mean, something?"

"It's in the trees."

Misato looked around. In their gas masks, the tactical team looked worried somehow, even as sweat pooled around their chins. Wait, why didn't _she_ have a gas mask?

"Is that all you've got, you saw something?"

"Fuckin' lizards," another voice crackled.

Misato heard a terrible sound, like wet leather ripping, that grew into a roar, rattling between the trees. Something about it, some sub vocal rumble, set her teeth on edge and made it feel like her guts had turned to water. She pulled her pistol out and pointed it low to the ground, and she heard the security men following her ready their weapons, loosening up slings and checking actions. They made a lot of noise.

The radio crackled. "I saw it. I saw it, God damn it!"

"Where?" said Misato.

"It disappeared!"

"This is fucked," the agent behind her grumbled, his voice muffled by the rubbery mask. He ripped it away from his face. "We shouldn't be out here. Something's wrong."

The noise came again, followed by the quick, irregular beat of gunfire from multiple sources. Misato instinctively sank into a crouch, whipping her head around to try to get a fix on it as she desperately shouted into the microphone.

"Where is it? _Where is it?" _

"The trees! It's using the trees!"

An intense burst of gunfire, and then a high-pitched scream, long, loud, and human. Sounds rippled through the trees, the wet slap of wounding and a crunching sound. Misato swallowed, thumbed back the hammer on her pistol, and thumbed her mike.

"That's it, pull back, we're-"

It all happened at once. A vast black shape, bigger than any man, tore through the forest with savage grace, ducking between the trees with liquid ease. The shape crossed in front of her and she felt herself shoved back by the mere presence of it, as if by the passing of the wind. There was a scream and a wet, rubbery shape hit her hard in the chest, knocking her on her back. She saw the riot shield spin around on its corner lazily, and then drop to the ground, smeared with blood.

The agent that carried it was on the ground, screaming, screaming without a face. His mask and helmet were gone, just gone, leaving him peering out one-eyed from a ragged red ruin where his nose and mouth were supposed to be, and he kept screaming as the enormous bear pinned him with one paw, bent low, and took a hefty bite of his midsection. Misato felt her gorge rise, but at the same time snapped up her gun and opened up on it. Snarling, the bear darted into the woods, melting, it seemed, into the trees. Gunfire erupted around her, deafening, and made the world whine as she ducked.

"Hold your fire," she realized she was shouting, "Hold your fucking-"

The bear came again, circled around, and took the three men standing behind her, pounded them into the ground with its paws and shouldered them aside with its bulk, roaring. Misato screamed, dropped her gun, and ran, grabbing the trees to wedge herself between them. She tripped, her foot hooking under a root, and shrieked in agony as she felt her ankle twist, sending runners of pain up her leg. So much for her fucking boots.

There was a dark shape on her, and for a moment, she thought it was the bear, until she saw it was carrying the riot shield, still marked with a red streak. It moved with a grace all its own, leaping from tree to tree- she saw flashes of bare feet touch the roots of the trees, gripping them almost, to avoid being fouled in vines or in the mud. The figure was dressed in a sort of cloak that was little more than a dried, motley looking dear skin draped over broad shoulders. She saw the white skull of an animal, maybe the deer, hanging around the figure's neck, along with some sharp teeth.

Then, the bear was on her in truth. She tried to get up but her leg just wouldn't take her, and she fell right on her ass, skidding in the mud. It stopped, pounded the ground, and roared, throwing its jaws wide to let her see its crimson teeth, slick with red gore. Its whole face was reddened from burying its muzzle in a dead man's belly. She wrenched her foot free with a yelp of pain and pushed back on her feet and one heel but she was too slow, and it was almost on her.

The figure in the deer skins barreled into the bear, pushing into it with the riot shield. She couldn't believe what she was seeing. He couldn't be that strong. No one was that strong. The figure held the bear back, wedging the riot shield in the ground so that the bear almost skidded over it, and she saw a flash of metal and steaming blood slashed across the ground, soaking into red mud. The bear roared and jumped back, pounding the ground with its paws.

A sword. He had a fucking _sword._

The figure held the shield close, tilted a little, and faced the animal, slowly circling his way between it and Misato. The bear stood up, rising up on its hind legs, taller than any man. Its roar rumbled through the trees and through her, and for a moment she almost felt her bladder loosen. There wasn't time. It fell on the figure like an avalanche, a falling mass of mud and fur.

Yet, it was wounded. Its sides and flanks were pockmarked with wounds, and there was a drawing cut along its midsection from which looped intestine now hung. The figure didn't confront it directly now, but turned, letting it slide over the slick surface of the riot shield. She saw the sword in his hand, saw it sink deep and slide along the bear's side, drawing open the wound. The bear stumbled, sliding on its flank, and turned, now fully focused on the figure, slavering jaws wide.

The figure tossed the riot shield aside and dropped into a crouching stance, slowing bringing the sword around until it was low and, oddly, pointed behind him. When the bear charged, its great mass now struggling to move, it came for him in unsteady, loping strides, and he dodged easily. The blade flashed, spinning in an almost artistic arc as it parted the space between the bear's skull and body, gliding through the flesh with a wet slap and the grinding of metal on bones. The animal fell, its head rolling free from the momentum, and great wet, slapping gouts of blood rolled out before it. A strange, gargling death rattle escaped the corpse, frothing the gore with tiny pink bubbles.

The figure stalked over to her, sword in hand, swathed in the skin of a dead animal, and gazed down on her. Her chest was heaving, and her leg made her want to scream, but all she could do was quiver from horror and terror. He stank of gore and sweat, and the skin didn't smell too good, either.

He lifted the sword, brought the blade close to her face, and her breath caught. He stared at the tip as it moved close to her check and then, with a deft, practiced movement, she felt pressure on her skin. Her helmet flopped off her head and landed beside her with an empty-bowl clatter, and the figure flourished the sword as he sheathed it in a battered, green metal scabbard. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, and she tried to say something, not even sure what, and it came out as a low, terrified gurgle. Finally she managed,

"Don't kill me."

The figure reached up and worked the deer skin loose. To her shock, it wasn't the old man they were looking for, it was the boy. He knelt down in front of her, his blue eyes piercing from within the grimy dirt-mask all over his face, like two spots of clear sky on a cloudy day. Thick, greasy black hair was flattened against his head and neck, hanging down below his shoulders. He was the most massively muscled person she'd ever seen with her own two eyes, but moved with a curious, feral grace as he drew into lean over her, supporting his weight with his hands. She swallowed, hard.

"Why would I do that?"

"What?" she gasped. "I… oh God, it killed them, they… how did you _do_ that?"

"When your men were killed, they must have wounded it. Its blood was on the leaves."

"It's a bear," she moaned, "It's a _bear." _

He smiled a thin smile, his teeth barely visible. "It bleeds. If it bleeds, I can kill it."

Her breathing slowed. "You… you're him, you're Shinji."

"You know my name?"

He drew nearer to her still, confused. He touched her hair with his fingers, turning some of the strands between his fingertips. "You're strange. Why do you smell like flowers?"

"Uh," said Misato.

He jumped back as her radio crackled, looking at it oddly.

"Ah," he said, "A radio. I should have known."

"Misato!" Ritsuko shouted, "What the hell is going on out there?"

Misato shook her head as she pushed the transmit key. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. We need ambulances, medics, and the whole deal. Just call everybody."

Shinji touched her leg, and without asking started undoing her boot. She winced and sucked in a breath as he pulled the boot off.

"Shoes make your feet soft," he grunted as he held her joint in his hand. He pinched and prodded her, and she yelped in pain.

"Lucky," he shrugged, "it isn't broken. Can you walk?"

"I don't think so," Misato said, "Just help me get-"

Without asking her, he leaned in and put his arms around her waist, then picked her up, all at once. She yelped and resisted the urge to squirm out of his grasp, afraid for her leg. As he lifted her up, he rolled her onto her shoulder, folding her at the waist into a fireman's carry. As if he was utterly unburned, he bent, scooped up his skin coat in his free hand, and started moving through the woods, turning this way and that to avoid the trees. She saw the stump of the bear's neck again and almost retched.

"Quiet."

It was easier to make it through the woods this way, being carried. She didn't look at her downed comrades, turning her head and closing her eyes. Shinji seemed to know the woods somehow, know the easiest ways to move and the best places to put his feet. She was shocked by how close they were to the road the whole time- if it weren't for the foliage, it would almost be in sight. He stepped out onto it, not complaining of the asphalt despite his bare feet, near the armored personnel carriers. He pitched forward, slid his arms under her shoulders, and lowered her onto her feet. He seemed to be able to easily support her entire weight with just his arms- not surprising, big as he was. He must have had a hundred pounds on her, even if he was maybe an inch taller than she. He held onto her for a moment, looking confused.

"You're very soft," he noted, sounding almost detached. He grabbed her stomach with his hand. "But not here," and then without preamble grabbed her thigh, "Or here."

She threw her arms over her chest. "Don't even think about it."

"What the…"

Misato turned, and saw Ritsuko standing a few yards away, staring open mouthed.

"Ritsuko Akagi," said Misato, "Meet Shinji Ikari. Where the hell are the ambulances? We've got wounded."

Ritsuko stared, dumbstruck, and Shinji stared at her. "May I ask you something?" he said, quietly.

"Uh," said Ritsuko. "Go ahead?"

He looked at Misato, and the back to her. "Does everyone in the world look like the two of you?"

"I need a beer," Misato said quietly.

Shinji turned his head a moment before she did, as if he heard it first. The squeal of tires, and the rumble of engines. A dozen black cars were pulling along the highway. Without speaking, he grabbed her, hauled her around to his side, and the sword flashed out from his hip. A second group of Section 2 agents emerged from the cars, pointing rifles at him.

"Wait a minute!" Misato shouted, "What are you-"

There was a small _thwap_ sound, and the tuft of a tranquilizer dart flowered from his neck. He blinked a few times, let go of her, and took a half-step, then fell face first onto the pavement, dropping first to his hand and knees and then onto his side. The sword rolled out of his grip and came to rest.

* * *

Shinji opened his eyes and immediately pressed them shut again, wincing at the pain. Light, light came from everywhere, and when he opened his eyes again, squinting at it, he saw that the whole ceiling was light, long bands of it hidden behind a frosted material that didn't look like glass. The light bled all the color out of his surroundings, leaving him in a monochrome void. Sensation overwhelmed him. As he turned his head, he felt nearly naked- they'd cut his hair, cropped it short to his head. The whispering of air on his neck made him feel exposed. He'd been washed, the sweat and grime of battle cleaned from his skin, and they'd stripped him and wrapped him in an airy, curious garment that cover his front but was loosely tied around the back. He lay on a huge bed with metal sides, sinking into the mattress. The white linens whispered against his skin when he moved.

He sat up, and found himself chained.

Heavy leather straps were done around his wrists, like belts, but padded on the inside. If he could but reach one hand with the other, he could undo them, as they were only buckled, not truly locked, but when he tried his reach came up short, metal links clanking against metal runners that went down the sides of the bed. The bed itself was bend down the middle, the upper half raised into a half-sitting position.

On one finger of his hand was a small, pinching clamp. An intravenous line had been driven into his forearm, and ran up to a drip at his side. He felt sticky patches on his chest and saw wires trailing into a machine. He'd read of all of these things but had never glimpsed them before, and stared at the blinking, undulating lines on the screen that read out his vitals. Another blink brought him the presence of mind to realize where he was. Hospital. He was in a hospital.

As he looked around the room, another realization came to him. They'd taken all his effects, including his sword. He tried to reach up and touch his hair, but the cuffs stopped him. Angrily, he tugged at them, and felt no give. He paused when he saw there was a large window on one side of the room. Beyond it, he saw people in white bustling about, but in the foreground he saw his own reflection. He tilted his head to the side.

He looked at the cuffs. They were tight around his wrist, but not overly so. If he turned his hand slowly, they would slide over the skin. It might be enough. He clawed his hand, pressing the tips of his fingers and thumb together, and pulled. The cuff slid up slightly, widening over the bottom of his hand. Another pull and it was stuck, too small to progress any further, but now he relaxed his hand, gently pulling, pausing, and then pulling again. Painfully, but incrementally, the cuff slid up to the base of his thumb, and there stuck. He clamped down his teeth and yanked, and with a brief flicker of pain from the compression, the cuff slid free, leaving a raw patch where it had rubbed the back of his hand. Quickly, he undid his other hand and slid to his feet.

The gown encumbered him too much, so he slid it off, leaving the wires and patches exposed and himself clad only in a tight cotton undergarment that barely covered his modesty. He was about to tear the monitors and finger clamp loose but stopped. It stood to reason that they were monitoring him remotely, and if he suddenly yanked everything free, someone would know. The women seated outside studied monitors like the one in his room, and they likely shared information that way. He looked around the room.

He had little in the way of assets. There was no other furniture but the bed, and the intravenous stand. He undid the tubing from his arm first, and then removed the needle itself, carefully sliding it from his skin so that it remained straight and did not break within his flesh. He tossed that away and tore a strip of cloth from the gown. The wound was small and would seal itself soon, but he tied the strip of cloth around it for good measure, and a spot of blood flowered to mark his hurt. He looked at the stand. A bottle, probably saline, hung from one side, and a bag from the other. He removed both, tossing them on the bed, and then grasped the pole itself. It unscrewed from the base easily. The hooks that held the feeds simply popped off leaving him with a serviceable short staff of hollow, soft metal. It would not do for an extended battle but was better than his bare hands.

He moved as close as he could to the door without pulling away from the wires that ran to his chest and finger, and when he could go no farther, swept his new staff over them, grunting softly as the sticky patches tore off his chest, tugging at his flesh. Now freed, he broke into a run. A woman in a short, white smock and curious toque was walking down the hall with a tray of medicines. She shrieked, dropped her tray, and ran in the opposite direction, shouting for an orderly. He scooped up the tray and loped after her, assuming she sought an emergency exit, each step almost a leap.

The people around him broke into pandemonium. He heard calls of _Orderly! Orderly!_ and moved away from them, tray in one hand, lightly twirling the metal rod in the other. Two large men in white shirts and pants jogged towards him, and he took in a deep breath. It was his first fight against other men, and he would do the old man proud regardless. He could see from their gait and the way they carried themselves they thought themselves hard men and strong, and wished others to see that as well. Shinji saw not their feigned strength but the slight limp in the one's leg and the touch of fear in the other's eyes.

He gave them no time to grapple with him, for he had no time to waste. He tossed the tray, spinning it so it flew flat and true, and it cracked the first of these orderlies right in the jaw, splitting his lip and pulling a thin line of blood through the air. He ducked a clumsy grab, spun the rod still one-handed and brought the end into the man's nose. Reflexively, the orderly clamped both hands down over his face. The other one punched him.

In that moment, there were two Shinjis. One lived in the moment. He felt the air crossing his skin, felt the breath of the man attacking him, lived for the sudden rush of battle. The other Shinji was calm, cool, a pool of still water in the midst of a raging storm. He remembered the words of his mentor.

_"Today, you will begin learning Aikido." _

_ "What is that?" _Shinji had replied.

_"Fighting the master of Aikido is like fighting a ghost." _

The orderly's fist carved a path through empty air, and landed on nothing. Shinji needed take no action, for the man had done himself in, putting too much of his strength into a failed advance that left him stumbling onto one foot. Shinji needed only spin his staff and crack him behind the ear, turn, and thrust his hips into the man's side. Barely touching him, he sent the orderly crashing into the nearby wall. The wall ended the conflict.

Shinji had already moved on, taking tall strides, keeping himself primed on the balls of his feet as he passed hallways and doors. He hated this place he named a hospital already, hated it for the stale, cold air and stench of old soap. He came to a larger area, one full of people and panic. Women ran away from him shouting for help, while old men with paunches stared at them. His mind named them doctors, masters of anatomy and healing, but he saw only soft men with water eyes, shying away from warrior ferocity. They gave no challenge as he passed.

The place was not designed to repel an attack. The path to the exits was marked with red signs proclaiming that very fact. Shinji took that path, keeping the staff ever moving, ready to strike. He knew he was almost free when he saw a large room with glass walls beyond which he saw grass. The doors were locked, and failed to open when he pressed on the metal bars that served to move them, so he went to the nearest window, grabbed a heavy monitor from a desk, and threw it through the glass. He brushed away the remaining shards from the frame, backed up, and leapt over the spilled glass on the floor. There was an alarm blaring now.

The final door was open to him. When he burst out of the building he felt an immense cold, such as he had never experienced before, but and the asphalt of the walkway leading to the door scourged his feet, and yet he ran, throwing his arms out to the sides. Until he knew confinement he had never known the poetry of his freedom, and how the open spaces sung in his veins. He ran until he saw that he could leave the hard tarmac behind and put his feet to soft earth.

He ran and he ran, and it was not until he felt winded that he chanced to look up. The staff fell from his hands and the strength went out of him. A shock went through his legs, and they felt unsteady, as if they would not bear his weight. He turned in a slow circle, all around, and could not believe his eyes. When they had chained him in the white room, someone stole the sky.

Above him was the curved roof of an enormous cavern, the walls so distant that they were hidden in fog. Indeed, the surface was so far above that clouds moved under it, glowing from the light of a thousand thousand mirrors, all slowly moving, a pool of golden light that remained fixed in the heavens. The building from which he emerged was long and low, bathed in that red-gold light, and behind it loomed a pyramid of opaque glass, the color of blood in old sunlight. He knew now why he was so cold; he was underground.

He scooped up the metal rod and resumed his run, heading he knew not where, so long as it smelled of freedom. The cavern had the rich air of tilled earth and moss, and he saw on its floor undulating hills and terraces marked with vegetation, a sea of rolling green waves. There were trees and birds flew overhead, and in the distance he saw an irregular lake, gleaming in the strange light. Behind him he heard the squeal of tires, and the sudden thump-thump of a wheel vehicle leaving the hard road for the ground, and then several more. He chanced a glance over his shoulder.

The cars, squat things with big wheels and cloth tops, slowed when they chased him, dust rising from their wheels, at obvious disadvantage moving over the loose black earth. There were three, but he could see more behind. He turned, raised the pole in one hand, and with a bounding half-jump hurled it like a javelin. It cracked the windshield of the first vehicle and it turned, squealing, and nearly rolled. The others swerved aside. He glimpsed a treeline in the distance, and ran for it.

"Shinji!" a familiar voice called, "Shinji, wait!"

He did not stop but slowed, glancing over his shoulder. The Katsuragi woman had stepped out of one of the vehicles and was chasing him, limping on her injured foot, waving her arms. She'd changed her clothes- whether the garment she wore was properly called dress or shirt he could not say, as it ended above the middle of her white thighs, which were exposed to the air, and above that it was so tight to her skin he could barely see the point. He would have been able to see every contour of her body had she not worn a short red jacket over it. Her dark hair streamed out behind her, waving like a flag.

He cursed himself for his stupidity. He'd stopped to gawk at her, driven by something that tightened his belly and quickened his breath even as it made it difficult to look anywhere else as his eyes warred to drink in the details of her chest straining against the fabric that covered it or the pumping of her thigh muscles or the promise of a glimpse of what lay higher under that skirt as she moved. By the time he realized his error he stood, flushed and panting and surrounded.

The cars rolled up around him and men in dark clothes, pants and jackets, emerged, sunglassed obscuring their faces. They aimed pistols at him and he momentarily forgot the woman's curves, blood again on his mind. If they meant to end him he would not sell his life cheaply. Reflexively he grasped for a sword that was not there.

"You _idiots!" _ she screamed, "Stop pointing guns at him!"

The men, there were four in all, lowered their weapons but kept them primed, fingers hovering over triggers, arms locked out. He had read of guns though he never handled one, and knew how they should be carried. These men were trained, and they had him at a disadvantage.

He stood straight, hands at his sides. "I yield."

The Katsuragi woman came to a stop, wincing on her injured limb, panting. As she did her chest heaved, and that feeling began to spring back to life within him. He suddenly felt curiously and strangely exposed, but with sheer force of will and clenched fists stood straight and stared her down. He was a warrior, he did not fawn and dissemble.

"Everybody calm down," she said quietly, moving close to him. She held out her hands, but in the open palmed, reassuring way a man might when approaching a dangerous beast of unknown temperament.

She rested her palms on his shoulders. Her hands, her fingers were smoother than the sheets on which he awoke. An accursed, involuntary shudder passed through him, and his eyes locked on hers. Something about the twitching of his arms under her grasp made her mouth open ever so slightly, and her pupils widen.

"You're okay," she said in the sing-song voice she'd adopt if she spoke to an angered dog, "Everything is going to be okay. No one is going to hurt you."

"Where am I?"

She took her hands away. "This is the Geofront. That's Nerv headquarters behind me."

Nerv. He feigned ignorance. "What's Nerv?"

She looked at him blankly for a moment. "It's complicated. We… fight… bad things."

His eyes narrowed. "I'm not simple."

"Uh," she said, "Right, I… Look, it's _really_ complicated. I'd rather not describe it to you outside in your underwear."

She meant to shame him, perhaps, or she may have meant it as a simple jest, as her cheeks colored and there was the ghost of a smile on her lips but more in her eyes, which, interestingly, drifted downwards. He contracted his belly instinctively, and that tiny gap between them formed between them again as she drew an involuntarily breath. She shook her head, vigorously, and her hair flailed.

"Come on," she said gently, taking his head. "Let's go inside, and talk."

He didn't move. "Not them. Just you."

She nodded and motioned with her hand, and one of them tossed her a set of keys. "This way," she said, leading him to one of the vehicles.

He opened the door and climbed inside. It felt and smelled alien- like oil and other things he'd never smelled before. There was a strange closeness with the woman as she mounted the driver's seat and sat next to him, their arms almost brushing. He was a little shocked when she started it up with a low, guttural rumble, fiddled with some device in between them, and it began smoothly moving of its own accord.

"Look," she said, now that they were alone. "I wasn't involved with the dart thing and the hospital. I didn't want that to happen."

"It did," said Shinji, shrugging. "Now they know I will not be chained."

"Uh," she said, glancing alternately at him and the road as she pulled out upon it, "Right. Listen, I-"

"Where is my sword?" he demanded.

"I don't know," she said flatly. "Look, I-"

"What did you do to my _hair?" _

She stared at him, then yelped and jerked the wheel, making the vehicle swerve. "I don't, look, they put that dart in your neck and picked you up, and nobody told me anything. I heard on the radio what happened and came to get you. That's it."

He looked at her flatly, then leaned back in the seat. "You are not in command here."

"No," said Misato. "I'm the operations director."

"What is that?"

"I'm in charge of combat operations-"

"Combat?"

He looked at him askance, stunned, it seemed, by his eagerness. "Yes. Like I said, Nerv is complicated. Lots of things go on here, but our main function is servicing and operating war machines called Evangelions."

He considered this for a moment, staring through the window. His memories of vehicles were limited to brief flashes, mostly the train and the bus. It had been so long that to move at such speed felt foreign to him, and staring out the window made him queasy, as loath as he was to admit it to himself. The woman was more pleasant as scenery, in any case.

She was clearly unnerved by his attention, constantly fidgeting, alternating between closing in herself and arching her back, almost intentionally twisting her body so that her garments tightened against her skin.

"Are you alright?" he said.

"No!" she almost shouted, "I'm not alright. I almost got eaten by a bear today, and then there's _you_, and I just…"

He watched her silently as she trailed off, grasping the steering wheel harder.

"I want you to put on some pants when we get back. Put on the pants, and keep them on."

"If you insist," said Shinji. "Where is my father? I spoke to him on the telephone."

"Yeah," she said, relaxing as her mind wandered to the new subject. "Yeah, you did. He's kind of an important guy around here. The, ah, the most important, I guess. He's the Commander."

"The Commander?" said Shinji. "He has no equal?"

"Well, no, not _here,"_ she said. "He's the commander of the Tokyo-3 branch. There are others. He's pretty high up, yeah."

"Why did he not come for me himself? Is he craven?"

"Things don't work like that," said Misato, "He's an important person, and…" she trailed off. "I don't know."

"Why did he not come to me in the hospital? I have not seen him since I was a boy."

"You're still a boy," she said, idly, though she didn't sound as though she believed it. "I know this is all strange and scary-"

"I am not frightened."

She ignored him. "I know this is all strange and scary, but you're home now, Shinji. You're safe. No more bears, no more crazy old man. You'll be taken care of, I promise."

"By who?"

She blinked. "Uh, what?"

"So far, you are the only one who has not aimed weapons at me or bound me to a bed. I will suffer no one else."

"Um," said Misato. "I don't know if… actually I don't know where… are you saying you want to live with me?"

"I have nowhere else."

He watched her carefully as her eyes flicked from him to the road and back. He could see her jaw tighten, almost feel her indecision. He fought to keep his face a mask, to hide his true meaning. He could see it. She carried a weapon and had some martial training by her gait, but she was surely the girl that Fuyutsuki told him about, the one they meant to feed to their dead god. This great cavern was a den of wolves and she a lamb, a hoary temple of dead gods and she the sacrifice to placate them.

He realized he was staring at her. She did not seem disturbed, as such, but she squirmed ever more in her seat and her cheeks were red and her breathing quickened.

"You fear me."

"I…" she said, "No, not really, but you… I mean…"

"Good. You need not."

He leaned back and closed his eyes. "Where are we going?"

"Actually," she said, "I really don't know. I guess we should-"

She trailed off. He sat up as he heard the sound, a low thrum that built to a high, screeching wail. The pyramid loomed over him, and he saw a light at the top brightly flashing, like a torch. There were other vehicles all around them, and activity.

Misato pulled to a stop. Her hands were still on the wheel, and shaking. "It's started," she said.

"What?"

"The end of the world."

* * *

Ritsuko shrugged into her lab coat and rushed down the corridor towards the Evangelion cages. She could only hope that Misato wouldn't get lost, or that they had some kind of a plan coming together to deploy Unit One. The test type, Unit Zero, was still sheathed in frozen, rock-hard Bakelite in the testing facility. She glanced at her watch. The alert had been issued almost an hour ago, and Misato was nowhere to be found. The last she'd heard, Misato was gathering up the boy and bringing him in after he woke up in the hospital and went on a rampage- she wish she knew whose ideas it was to chain him to the bed and sedate him, strip him of all his possessions and cut his hair. Letting him keep the sword was obviously out of the question, but…

She focused her mind, trying to screen out the dozen problems she had to deal with at once and put them into some kind of manageable order. She pulled her tablet out of her labcoat pocket and flicked it on to check the latest data. Fortunately, the approaching pattern was slow moving, appearing first off the coast, picked up on the furthest early warning sensors. The creature was already being tracked by satellite and the Self Defense Forces were, pointlessly, trying to stop it. They seemed to be slowing it down well enough, which was the best she could hope for.

The tablet chimed and a full motion video image of the Commander appeared. She almost jumped, and missed a step, cursing herself for putting on heels.

"Akagi."

"Yes, sir?"

"Has the pilot been secured?"

He couldn't ask if they'd found his son.

"Yes," Ritsuko said, nervously. "Are you sure you want to put _him _in-"

"Yes."

The Commander vanished without further explanation, leaving her with a blur screen flickering with white text- messages from her staff, updates on the startup process. Unit One had sat idle for years. She slid the device back in her pocket and clenched her teeth in annoyance. Sixteen years to prepare, and it still came down to all this, at the last minute. She was scowling when Misato walked out of an elevator in front of her, the boy walking at her side in a bathrobe.

She felt a moment of panic when she saw him, and briefly wondered why he wasn't handcuffed. Misato seemed at ease, though, so Ritsuko relaxed as much as she could.

"Mis- Captain Katsuragi," she said. "Is the pilot ready?"

"Pilot?" said Shinji.

Ritsuko swallowed. Great. "Come on, follow me." Misato was ever getting lost in the labyrinthine tunnels of Nerv headquarters. No argument was given.

Shinji looked around, watching the walls, and he looked alternately annoyed with them and confused by them. He was barefoot still, his steps curiously silent, his way of moving both graceful and somehow dangerous, like a wild animal. He didn't seem to give much of his attention to keeping his robe closed, either- it was loosely tied, and he had nothing but underwear on beneath it.

_What a strange person,_ Ritsuko thought. She could barely see any of his father in him.

She stopped at the heavy blast door that led to the Evangelion cage.

"I need to prepare you for this."

He looked at her and said nothing, and she felt a tickle between her shoulder blades, and a sudden, irresistible urge to keep talking, to drown out the silence with sound. "There's nothing in the world like what you're about to see."

"Once place is much the same as another."

"Not like this, I-"

Shinji reacted first, dropping into a kind of stance- feet wide, angled slightly out, hands at his sides for balance, fingers spread. The ground rolled and Ritsuko fell against the wall. The lights flickered, and Misato stumbled. Shinji had her around the waist with stunning speed, and took Ritsuko by the arm to lift her up. His grip was like an iron clamp, solid, unmoving, but he did not hurt her. She shook herself free, mostly because he was willing to let go, and leaned against the wall. Her tablet chimed and she pulled it out.

Her assistant, Maya Ibuki, was calling her. She tapped the "answer" button and the wisp of a girl appeared on screen.

"Doctor Akagi," she whispered, "they dropped an N2 mine on it, but it's not stopping! You have to hurry!"

She nodded, closed the call, and put the tablet away.

"Sorcery," said Shinji.

She looked at him askance for a moment. "Come on."

Ritsuko put her hand to the palm reader next to the door. It scanned down her fingers and palm prints, and the door hissed open with a rush of cold air. It was always cold in the cage from the cooled LCL bath, and she shivered involuntarily, goospimples rising up on her legs. Shinji didn't seem to notice. He simply walked through the door.

It was dark in the cage. It took Ritsuko's eyes a moment to adjust. Shinji kept walking, almost as if he knew where to go, until he stood in the middle of the gantry. He seemed to relax a little, more at home in a less confined space- much less confined, actually. She could start to see the outline of the Evangelion in the darkness when the lights came up. Shinji winced and blinked, but stood his ground.

The Evangelion stared him down. Eyes as big as he was tall, flat and black like a doll's eyes, gazed back at him. Hunched forward with the neck armor open to admit the entry plug, it seemed to crane over the walkway to peer down at him. Unlike the utilitarian, almost elegantly minimalistic design of Unit Zero, Unit One was almost overly ornamented, in her opinion- painted in high gloss purple enamel with bits of green here and there on the tall, fin-like shoulder pylons and the arms. Standing up to its shoulders in cool, quietly circulating LCL, its true size was masked.

"What the hell are you?" Shinji whispered.

"This is the Evangelion," said Ritsuko. "We call it Unit One."

"That does not tell me what it is," said Shinji.

"It…" there wasn't much she could say. "It's our fighting machine."

"You want me to pilot this?"

A second bank of lights flicked on. Gendo Ikari stared down at them through a pane of glass from the upper control room, silhouetted darkly by the fluorescent lights behind. Technicians were rushing in behind him to begin the startup process. Ritsuko needed to be up there, herself.

"Correct," he boomed, voice amplified by speakers.

"Father," said Shinji.

"Yes. It's been a while."

Shinji ignored him and looked at her. "What would you have me do?"

"I better get up to the bridge," said Misato, turning.

"We don't have time for a plugsuit… look, it's complicated, just follow me."

She turned and headed for the set of stairs running the side of the Eva's neck, her shoes clang-clanging on the metal while Shinji moved in silence. The entry plug jutted out like a spear in the Eva's neck, the pressurized hatch hanging open. She turned to him.

"You'll pilot it from in here."

He peered inside. "There aren't any controls."

"I know. I'll run you through the process."

"As you say."

"You'll have to take off that robe, I'm sorry-"

With casual indifference, he shrugged the robe off and it pooled around his feet. He stood there in his underwear, staring at her, as he did a moment before.

"Okay," she said. "Let's go ahead and have you climb inside. There's handholds-"

He didn't need much instruction. He sat on the edge of the hatch and swung his legs in, craning his neck to see the places where hand holds were bolted to the curved metal. He slid into the pilot's seat, the surface squeaking against his bare skin, and slipped his legs under the control yoke.

She stood up and gave a wave to the control booth.

"Okay," she said, leaning into the plug. "When I close the hatch, the plug is going to flood with LCL."

"What is that?"

"It's a breathable liquid," she said, pleased with how she gave the lie of omission without a waver in her voice. "Once it's electrolyzed, you can breathe it in and out, just like air."

"I have read of such liquids," he said, leaning back. "Then what?"

"Then you'll synchronize with it. I'll talk you through it. Just try to relax."

She stood back, swung the hatch closed, and the system did the rest, the emergency release handle spinning wildly as the servos closed the seal, followed by a hiss of pressure. There was a deep thrum and a hollow pouring sound as the fluid flooded the inside of the plug. She stood up and bolted for the lift that would carry her up into the control room, jogging quickly down the stairs. The Commander had left when she arrived. She could see him in the plug, eyes locked forward, breathing deeply but calmly.

The control room was two panels of monitors and workstations running up to the large picture window where the Commander had stood. She took his position, staring down at the Eva's back. "Okay," she said, "Seat the plug."

Shinji didn't make a sound as the metal tube slid home, bouncing into place, and the Eva's neck gently, smoothly lifted up, the armor plates locking into place over it. She glanced at Maya, who'd taken a seat next to her.

"His vitals are good. Actually, they're exceptional," she said, blinking. "Heart rate, blood pressure… he's like an Olympic athlete."

Ritsuko nodded. "In a way, that old bastard did us a favor. We couldn't ask for a more ideal candidate. Patch us into the plug so he can hear me."

Maya nodded.

"Can you hear me?" said Ritsuko.

"Yes," said Shinji.

"Good," she folded her arms under chest. "This is going to feel really weird. You're going to synchronize with the Eva, and make it move with your thoughts."

"I see," said Shinji. "Do it."

She blinked. She thought she'd have to explain, or get some kind of argument, she glanced at the monitor and saw him placidly awaiting instruction.

"Start the process," said Ritsuko.

"First stage boards are all green," said Maya. "Vitals are still at baseline. Second stage connections beginning."

"I see colors," said Shinji.

"That's normal."

"Third state connetions beginning," said Maya.

Ritsuko turned from the window to watch the neural connections on Maya's monitor. The connection was represented by a series of green lines that combined a sea of data from the Eva into a simplified interface. The lines traced across the screen and all took off at once, gently rising. "His synchronization ratio is being calculated," said Maya.

The monitor blinked. Fifty-five percent. No plugsuit, no neural connectors, just sitting in the plug. Fifty-five percent.

"Unbelievable," she said.

"I feel strange," said Shinji.

"That's normal," said Ritsuko. "You'll get used to it. Sit tight, you're going to be launched in a second."

"Launched?" said Shinji.

"Yes. There's an angel… a giant creature approaching the city, and you have to stop it."

"Stop it?"

"Yes," she said quietly. "Kill it."

"I can do that."

* * *

Misato tapped her foot impatiently as she waited, humming tunelessly to herself. She could feel an immense pressure on her- techs all around the vast space kept shooting glances at her, and there were three generals from the Self Defense Force staring down at her back, and behind _them,_ the Commander himself. It was all too heavy, pressing her forward, towards the huge screen at the front of the room. The space was laid out on multiple tiers, with the Commander at the top on a small platform, a ring of consoles where she stood to give orders and communicate with her pilots, and the lower level where the interface with the MAGI system stood.

"Status," she said to no one in particular.

Hyuga, the bespectacled technician that gave her data on the Eva's function, turned slightly. He was pale. "The pilot is synchronized and ready for launch."

"Very well," she said. "Launch, and put it on the big screen."

The main display, actually a two dimensional hologram projected into the cavernous space, changed from a wireframe overlay of the city to camera footage- the sky had clouded, and it was getting dark. Unit One arrived on the surface with a tremendous bounce, the machine's head snapping up, alert, as it arrived. The launch clamps unlimbered themselves from its hips and shoulders, and it swayed on its feet. Her breath quickened.

"Shinji," she said, quickly.

"I hear you."

"Okay, just concentrate on-"

Unit One moved forward with an alien, eerie grace. He took two quick steps and dropped into a crouch, one foot under the machine, one out behind, like a sprinter, arms to his sides for balance, the big armored head sweeping from side to side, looking for threats. The entire room went silence. She heard on of the general drop a pencil on the floor.

"Where is it?"

She glanced at the wireframe overlay, watching the blue marker for the angel and the red triangle for the Eva. "It's to the east, but listen to me first."

"Go on."

"The umbilical, on your back. Keep it there. If you lose it you got to auxiliary power, and you've got about a minute of combat time, five minutes if you're just walking around, maybe a day on low level standby. Got it?"

"Yes. I see it."

She saw it too, at a dozen angles, through Shinji's own sight and from cameras placed around the city. Wide shouldered and lumbering, it moved slowly on short, stiff legs, trailing long spindly arms at its sides. It had been badly burned and broken by the bombing. It had no head to speak of, but on its chest was a bony mask, like a caricature of a bird, broken and blistered and weeping luminescent blue blood.

"It's bleeding," said Shinji. "If it bleeds, I can kill it."

A shiver went down Misato's spine. "Okay, you're not ready for weapons yet, but there's a knife…"

"I have all the weapons I need," he said, and charged.

Unit One jumped into a sprint, the heavy footfalls of its vast feet shaking the camera and radiating down into the Geofront itself, so that she could feel it under her feet, just slightly out of tune with the displays. The effect made her queasy and she had to fight to keep looking.

"Slow down," she said, calmer than she thought she would. "Don't-"

He ignored her, plowing headlong into the creature. He cried out, gurgling from the LCL, and his furious cry made the speakers in the command center squeal. He lifted the angel bodily from the ground, planted his feet, and turned at the hips, bringing back down, hard, on its side. It rolled away from him, confused, crying out in pain in a wail that made her teeth rattle. It moved with surprising quickness now, more like an animal than anything, skittering about on all fours.

There was flash. The screen fuzzed as a great light bloomed across Unit One's chest, and the Evangelion stumbled backwards, putting its elbow through the top of a skyscraper. Thankfully, most of the inhabited buildings were retracted into the ground on long runners- the city could draw in on itself in an emergency and sink into the ground to hide. The buildings that remained on the surface where either pieces of armor plating or weapons deployment platforms disguised as civilian structures, or should have been emptied during the evacuation.

Unit One stood up quickly, dropping into a crouch again, and didn't give the angel time to press its attack. Shinji grabbed for it, arms wide, and the angel moved and there was a sudden rush of air and judder of impact as their hands met. They pushed against each other for a moment, grappling hand-to-hand, and then two long beams of light extruded from the angel's bent elbows, stopped, and slammed forward like pile drivers.

Unit One's hands exploded, sending chunks of metal, bits of synthetic flesh and red, red blood spraying out, painting an x-shape over the angel's body as Shinii flailed, screaming. Misato's breath caught. Then, she remembered.

"Shinji!" she shouted, "They're not your real hands!"

She heard him bite off his cry of pain, but before he could move, the angel grabbed Unit One's head in both hands and repeated its attack. There was a tremendous crack and the Evangelion shuddered. Shinji was screaming. The angel didn't let go, but hit it, again, and again, and again.

Shinji's scream cut off. She heard him take three quick, deep, rasping breaths, and he gave a wordless, gurgling cry of raw fury. With the stumps of Unit One's arms, he forced the angel's grasp away, planted a foot between its legs, and stepped forward, putting the whole weight of the Eva behind a punishing headbutt that sent the angel stumbling backwards.

"_Does it have a weak spot?"_

Misato's mouth was dry. She opened her mouth and closed it again, silently.

Calmly, but very clearly, the Commander said, "The red sphere in its chest."

Misato blinked, and turned around.

She saw what he meant, the luminous sphere embedded in the creature's midsection, below its face. Shinji must have heard, because he caught the angel in a crushing bear hug and lifted it from the ground, then pounded it down into the earth. A great plume of dust and smoke rose up, obscuring them for a moment. Her knees went weak.

He pinned the angel, reared up, and with a cry of rage and pain, rammed the broken, splintered ends of Unit One's arms into the core. There was a horrible grinding sound as he pushed, his guttural cries almost an animal's snarl, and the angel was on the defensive now, almost pitiable as it tried to wriggle out from underneath him. She saw cracks forming in the core.

The angel shrieked, expanded, and its body went liquid, losing its shape. Shinji pulled back, but it was too late. It swirled around him, clamping down on Unit One like a great pair of jaws, and the core grew brighter until it was not red at all but blindingly white, and then it burst. The screen went to static and the shuddering boom rippled through the Geofront a moment later. The ground under her feet swayed lightly, and she put a hand out to steady herself.

"Get it back on!"

The view came back, fuzzy at first, snowy with static, and then clearer. It was raining, somehow, and it was not water that fell but blood. A dark shape moved in the downpour of gore, striding forward resolutely. As it drew nearer, she could see Unit One, battered but unbroken. It took a few steps, fell to one knee, and then collapsed forward.

"Shit," she said, forgetting herself, and then quickly, "Get the recovery crews out, now! Is it down?"

"Blue pattern gone," Hyuga said quietly.

* * *

Shinji woke up once again under the bright lights, but this time unbound, and without the annoying machines and needle in his arm. He sat up immediately, gazing around the room. There was no way to get his bearings- if this place was not the same, it was identical. Again they had garbed him in the curious gown. He smelled his hands, working his fingers to make sure they were still there. He smelled like blood.

It was not an unfamiliar sensation.

"Hey."

He was taken by surprise, and recoiled, but only for a moment. Misato stood at the entrance to the hospital room, wide-eyed. He sensed some misgiving in her, as she stood on the threshold, unsure whether to enter, the fingers of her hand twitching slightly. She moved closer, albeit nervously. She had a white plastic bag in one hand.

"You have nothing to fear from me."

She remained tense as she drew closer, and sat on the edge of the bed. "You're okay? I mean, you -"

"I felt like my hands were ripped off," said Shinji, "yet they are still here."

She looked at the floor. "I'm sorry, I should have warned you."

"It doesn't matter. That which does not kill me makes me stronger."

She looked looked up at him, though it seemed she was trying to hide behind her hair. He brushed it out of her face, and the movement seemed to shock her.

"You don't have to do this, if you don't want to."

"But I do," said Shinji.

"Are you sure?"

He was. There was pain, but it was swallowed in a sea of exhilaration. He felt like a _god_ when he was in the machine, its body one with his, towering like a titan of old. The pain the enemy gave him only made his will to overcome it stronger, his rage deeper. He had never felt anything quite like it. Misato studied him, leaning back slightly.

There were many things he felt today he had never felt before.

"Are you ready to leave?" she said. "The doctors say you're okay. I can get you out of here."

"And go where?"

"Home," she said, "with me. I took care of it. You'll be my ward, and-"

"Where is my father?"

"I don't know," she said, softly. "Working, I suppose. There's a lot to do."

"All of it more important than me," he said, bitterly. He surprised himself.

She looked hurt. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," he said, "It's not your fault. What's that?"

She opened the bag. Inside it was a set of clothes- plain black pants and a white shirt, and a paper folder with more papers inside of it. She pulled it all out and spread it out on the bed.

"If we're leaving," she said, "You have to put on some clothes, this time. I have shoes, too. I hope they fit."

"The papers?"

"Terms of your, ah, your employment," she said. "You'll draw a salary for your services, I guess, and, well, there's not much else to it, really. It's mostly stuff or me to sign after I become your legal guardian."

"I see," said Shinji. "I would know these terms."

"Yeah," said Misato. "Look," she said.

He looked at her.

"You can walk away from this. You don't have to, if you don't want to. We can find someone else."

"There is no one else," said Shinji. "Not like me."

"No," said Misato, "I guess not."

With that, she left him to dress, although he was not sure why. There was little she had not already seen. He slipped into the pants first, and then the shirt. He found it too restrictive when he tried to button it, and so left it to hang open. When he stepped outside, Misato fussed over him insisting on buttoning the buttons anyway. She had to strain with the three under his neck, and gave up.

"Yeah," she said, "I guess they don't make school uniforms in your size."

"It will do," said Shinji, "until I can be rid of it."

Her eyes widened a little, but she said nothing. The shoes were a better fit, even as they chafed an uncomfortably isolated him from the feel of the ground under his feet while he walked. He earned some stares as he walked, including from a large man with a heavily bandaged nose. He smiled at that.

Misato's car waited for them in a parking garage. The roof was low and the whole place was made of unmarked concrete, and it had sepulchral feel he misliked immediately. All the sounds were made hollow, even their footsteps. She opened the door for him and he slipped into her car, much smaller and lighter than the others he had seen so far. He found it somewhat cramped. Her arm touched his when she sat down, and she coughed for no readily apparent reason.

"Well," she said, "Here we go."

She started the car with a low rumble, and pulled out of the spot. He was still unused to such rapid movement, and unconsciously gripped the sides of the seat as she made a series of quick turns. The ceiling seemed too low and the walls too near, but she only went faster, and the tires squealed, the echo making it a shriek. She seemed pleased with herself.

"Put on your seat belt," she said, absently.

It took him a moment to work out what she meant, grabbing the strap that hung by his side and fixing it in a buckle at his lap. She drove them through a long, long tunnel lit harshly by orange lights, for what felt like forever until emerging onto the surface.

"Can these windows open?"

She pushed a pair of buttons, and the windows slid down of their own accord. He breathed in the hot night air deeply, and closed his eyes to take it in. It felt far better than he expected, to be outside again. Once he opened his eyes, he stared openly at his surroundings- great towers of glass and concrete and steel, so high he couldn't see their tops for the roof of the car.

"How does the wind get in here?"

"Same way it always does, I guess," Misato shrugged.

He had difficulty following the route- the movement was too fast, and by the time they left the tall buildings, he had already crossed more open space than he ever had in his entire life. The sky was different here, the darkness not so deep, the stars almost hidden. He missed them already.

"You were out for a while," she said, absently. "I already got some other clothes for you to put on."

She pulled into an empty parking lot, and killed the engine. He got out before she did, looking at the place. It was a low, three story block of rooms, each the same as all the others.

"This is where you live?" said Shinji.

"Yes," said Misato. "Come on."

He followed her up a short set of steps to a door. She opened it with a swiped card and let him up yet more steps, to the second story. There she picked a door, seemingly at random, identical to all the others. The same card opened this door, and cool air rushed out. He stood at the threshold, looking in. It was small, compared to the openness of the wilderness, and dark until she reached in beside him to turn on some lights. He blinked from their intensity.

"Well," she said. "Welcome home."

"I'm home?" he said, phrasing it as a question as he stepped over the threshold.

She followed him in and closed the door, slipping out of her shoes. He did the same, eagerly, and flexed his toes once he was free of them. He walked further in, across plush carpet that reminded him of walking on moss. The apartment was a bombardment of unfamiliar smells, and felt small and unnaturally cold.

"You okay?" she said.

"Yes," he said quietly. "You live here."

"Yup," she took him by the arm.

She led him into a small room. The walls were made of boxes. He recognized a cooking apparatus, though he wondered how it would work without wood, and how the smoke would escape. There were other rooms as well, a large room at the end of her space where she slept and too smaller ones, one of which was piled high with cardboard boxes and clothing. The other was empty, but for a small chest of drawers and a thin sleeping mat.

"I will sleep in here?" he said.

"Yeah," said Misato. "I just have a little guest mat there. We'll get you a real bed."

He blinked. To him, a real bed was a hammock.

"Do you want to take a bath?"

He considered that for a moment. He didn't feel dirty, but he did ache and some hot water would ease the hurt he felt in his hands. "Yes," he said.

"Good, you do that, and I'll make us some food."

He passed through the kitchen into the bathing room. There was a privy there, marked by its shape, although it had some sort of tank on the back. He touched a handle on the side, and the water in the bowl drained itself in a spiral and then refilled. He could see how that would be useful. There was a long tub, over which was two spigots, one low and one high, the latter full of many small holes. When he turned one of the nobs only cold water came out, but when he turned the other it grew warm, and he found he could adjust the temperature by turning them against each other. A curious device.

Once it was sufficiently hot, like the scalding fire baths he'd always taken, he removed his clothing and stepped under the stream. Water sprayed everywhere, until he realized he was meant to pull the translucent plastic curtain alongside him. Before he could, though, a curious creature approached him, a towel folded under on arm, or flipper. It was some sort of bird. He slid his hands under his flippers and picked it up. It stared at him.

"Wark," it said.

He put it under his arm and ignored its struggling as he walked back out into the kitchen. Misato was turned around at the stove, fussing over a pot. Her head tilted from side to side to a beat, and she had small speakers stuck in her ear, wired to a tiny box on her belt.

He held out the penguin. "Excuse me."

She ignored him, or else didn't hear.

"Excuse me!"

She took out one of the speakers. "What do you…"

She trailed off as she turned around. Her face turned a bright red and she yelped, hopping on one foot as if the floor had grown hot. She covered her eyes with her hands, flinging some sort of sauce from the spoon she held all over the kitchen, and her shirt.

"What are you _doing_?" she shouted.

He held out the creature. "This was in the bathroom."

"He was trying to take a bath!" she shouted, still shying from him. "Just put him down and get back in the shower!"

He shrugged, and put the creature on the floor. "Wark," it said, and waddled off.

"Why are you-"

"You're naked!" she shouted, "Stop being naked all the time!"

He scratched the back of his head, then walked back into the bathroom. As soon as he'd turned, her fingers spread, such that she could see him. She must have thought he didn't notice. Once he was inside, he slid behind the curtain and went about washing himself. She opened the door and put a pile of clothes on the turned-down seat of the privy without entering and quickly shied away, pulling the door shut behind her.

After a time, she banged on the door. "Come on, the food is going to get cold, and there's only so much hot water!"

He turned the valves off and emerged, drying himself with a towel he found hanging on the wall, and then dressed himself. While he bathed, she had changed her clothes. He found himself confused by her byzantine notions of modesty, as the attire she'd adopted now was even _less_ conservative than her ordinary clothing. The pants she wore, if they could be called that, had no legs at all, and he was fairly sure she had nothing on underneath, and doubly sure she had nothing on under the loose yellow shirt she wore that left her arms exposed and barely covered her midriff, sliding up to show the small of her back as she sat cross-legged on one of the chairs at the kitchen table. When he passed her he felt his eyes drawn to the swell of her chest within the shirt and his pulse quickened. He tore his eyes from her as he sat down.

The plate of… stuff in front of him was most confusing.

"What is this?"

"Dinner!" she said brightly. "Real food! You'll love it."

He took a bite. He looked at her.

"Perhaps I should cook," he said.

* * *

_You have been reading_

**The Riddle of Steel: Director's Cut**

**_Chapter Two: Long Tall Sally_**


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer:

The Following work of fiction incorporates the works of Hideaki Anno, the wonderful people at Studio Gainax and Studio Khara, and of Robert E. Howard, with respect to John Millius and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

* * *

A thin stream of blood trickled down his forehead. It was too heavy and too dense to disperse into the LCL around him. He reached up and brushed it from his eye, and felt the Eva mimic the motion, or perhaps the Eva made the motion and he merely mimicked it. He could no longer tell which was which. A burning lance of pain ran through his belly, and his left arm was a network of hot wires laid one over another. Together his many hurts sang a song of agony and it was a song of triumph also. He was the machine and the machine was him. He could feel it breathing in time with his own. He could feel the hard stone under his hands as he perched onto of the skyscraper waiting for the angel to come at him again. Like an insect, he waited to pounce on his prey. Misato screamed in his ear, exhorting him to retreat, her voice like a distant memory. There was only the thunder of blood in his ears and the acid tang of his own bleeding on his tongue, and the fury of vengeance burning in his chest. He had a vague sense that, somewhere, there was a timer ticking down.

The angel moved, snake-like, through the city, winding its way through the maze of skyscrapers, most of them empty or full of useless rifles or simply great slabs of concrete sandwiched between steel plates. He was on top of one of the latter, the Eva's head swaying from side to side as he traced the creature's movements. He could feel the severed umbilical trailing from his back but he didn't care. He had the rest of it looped through his left fist, and he was waiting. He looked at the alien thing that wound toward him through the air and knew it was afraid of him.

He lept. He felt the skyscraper tilt from the push he put on it when he jumped. He went over the beast's back and landed on it, the Eva's massive feet scraping along its back with an awful, shrill sound, and the thing shrieked in pain. It bucked and flailed, but he held, digging the Eva's fingers, his fingers, between two of the segmented plates on its back. It reared up like a serpent rising to strike, trying to throw him off, and yet still he held. He took a looped length of the umbilical cable and threw it around and around the thing's neck until he was bound to it.

It rose up into the air, turned, and came back down, trying to drag him off. Red alarms flashed all around him as the Eva was ground into the pavement, lifted, and crushed through layers of steel and concrete as the combatants struck one of the shield buildings. The cable frayed but it held, and this time, he kept to the thing's back. With its one truncated light-whip it snapped at him. The thin coil of light wrapped 'round the cable and snapped it with a great, resounding crack, and Shinji would have fallen back had he not pulled up one of the segments of armor plate and begun pulling at the pale, bloodless flesh underneath. The beast was shrieking in pain and fury, and he felt himself sliding across the seat as the angel spiraled through the air. He felt lightheaded, and spared a glimpse over his shoulder. It was carrying him out of the city.

The timer hit zero. The world started flickering. Raw, seething fury surged through him, like molten rock in his veins, and he threw his mouth open in an enraged scream. He heard a voice, distant like an echo in the mountains, whispering something to him about absolute borderlines and safety limits and thresholds, and it devolved into an awful, terrified screaming. In some other life, he might have cared. For now, there was only rage. His back hit a hillside and to him it was just mud and the trees were just tiny hard leaves of grass, and he tore his foe from the sky and rolled with it. It face him now, that face that was not a face, and its red-hot arm was about his throat. He felt his feet touch the ground and pulled the angel back and slammed it into the earth, feebly. He cried out, a scream of animal fury tearing loose from his throat, burning in its wake, and the Eva echoed him. He felt a mouth open that wasn't his mouth, felt the alien pleasure-pain of bolts tearing loose from his gums, the painful whistle of air on his blunted teeth. He couldn't remember what he was any more.

It was only struggling now. He reared up and forgot technique and poise and precision and forgot himself, and when he bucked forward his mouth found flesh and he bit into it, felt it split and slide around his teeth as they sank in to the root, and like an enraged animal he twisted and pulled, drawing by the shoulders, and felt a long streamer of torn flesh follow after, spraying him with gore. The heat of it on his chest was like a baptism. He swallowed, and felt a gulp of LCL flood down his throat, and in some phantom sense, felt a thick hot chunk of raw flesh slid down another gullet, also his own. He had to concentrate. He needed to kill it.

He saw what he wanted, shining red, glowing with life. He couldn't move one of his arms and the other was a nothing but lancing pains, so he dug his face into it. He knew he had a horn and he used it, slicing through the thing's flesh. It was making small sounds now, almost like a child's pained screams, as he tore it open with tooth and horn until the core was exposed. He picked it up in his mouth the way a snake picks up an egg it means to swallow and closed his jaws. It resisted for a brief time, and the resistance only whipped up his fury. He crushed his mouth closed with all his might until the red sphere burst and its contents flowed over his teeth and jaw and down his throat, and he swallowed happily, throwing back his head so that he might get more of it down before his teeth finally snapped shut and the sharp shreds of the core hung broken from his mouth.

Finally, he let himself fall over. The world became vague, fuzzy. Somehow, he made the entry plug eject and the LCL drained, and the sudden return of gravity as buoyancy fled hit him like a mountain and he buckled under it, but kept moving. He turned the handle of the hatch with his good arm, letting momentum do most of the spinning, until it fell open, and then flopped over the edge. He wasn't sure how far he fell to the ground, only that he landed in soft earth and wet grass. The Eva lay on its side, almost rolled over on the plug, and he had to duck out from under it, limping. The dead bulk of the angel, already putrefying beside him, stank like death. The entry plug slid in of its own accord and the neck armor closed, and the Eva rolled onto its back, pulled down by gravity. He stood beside it as it lay there staring up at the sky in repose, and felt that its one eye was watching him.

He heard voices behind him and turned. The two boys saw him standing there holding his arm, the plugsuit stripped away in a sliced latticework from the sympathetic burns, blood matted in his hair and covering his face and dribbling from his lips, and he grinned. One of them pointed a camera at him.

He blacked out.

* * *

_Two Weeks Earlier_

* * *

Misato woke in the darkness and shivered, feeling a presence. Light streamed in through the drawn curtains of her bedroom, turning the piles of cold car magazines, empty cardboard boxes, piles of clothes and the bench where she disassembled and cleaned her sidearm into an alien landscape fraught with strange angles. She lay curled on her side, her knees pulled to her chest, in the fetal position. There was someone behind her, and she slowly turned her head, to avoid giving away that she was awake.

Shinji stood in the doorway. It was too dark to see his face, but she knew he was looking at her. She could feel his gaze sweeping over her, examining her, and heard his breathing quicken. She rolled over onto her back and sat up on her elbows, watching him back. He'd slept in his underwear. In the early morning gloom, he looked like a statue carved from gray stone. He walked into the room silently, testing his footing with each step, his every movement loaded with peculiar grace.

Her shirt had ridden up in her sleep and her shorts had ridden down, but she didn't feel exposed. She got up on her knees, her heart pounding in her chest, as he drew nearer. She could feel heat radiating from his body like a furnace. It made sweat prickle on her forhead, and her throat went dry. He just stood there staring down at her. She put her hands on his thighs and slowly slid them up, surprised at how supple his skin was. Her fingers probed over the sweaty cotton of his briefs, and curled around the waistband. She yanked it down.

His mouth fell open and emitted a high-pitched screech.

Misato sat bolt up right, flailing to free herself from her blankets and find the alarm clock. It was still dark outside. She rolled around aimlessly trying to remember where the damned thing was, annoyed by its wretched screeching. Finally she found it, swept away the empty beer cans that stood on it like grave markers, and hit the snooze button. She fell back down onto her pillow, lying on her back, and covered her eyes with her hands. She peeked out between her fingers. It was five in the morning. She knew she had to get up, but she didn't want to. Her hands fell down by her sides and she took a deep breath to blow her hair out of her eyes.

Lying there in half-sleep, half dreaming, the last moments of her slumber drifted back into her mind, and she felt a coldness tighten in her stomach. She shouldn't be thinking about him that way. Stupid dreams. She looked over at the clock again. She had another two minutes before it went off again, and closed her eyes, but they opened again immediately, almost against her wishes. She tried to kick her legs to sit up, and found herself oddly encumbered. Sometime during the night, she'd wrapped herself in a pile of blankets so tightly she could barely move. She had to roll to untuck them from under her body, and by the time she did, she had to turn the alarm clock off again. This time, she had the presence of mind to actually slide the switch to keep it from going off again.

This part, sitting up on her knees and trying not to doze off, was the most difficult part of waking up. She could sleep sitting up like this, if she really wanted to, just pillow her arms on her knees and lean her head on her arms and go to sleep, she'd done it before. Her head was heavy and her mouth was dry, full of cotton. Every time she moved, it was like there was a pile of old pencil erasers inside her skull, sliding around against themselves. She looked at the cans. She'd only had six beers. Lightweight.

Shakily, she stood up, and stopped before sliding the door open. She pulled her shorts up. She was going to have to get decent sleeping clothes if she was going to keep Shinji around the house for very long. Tugging on her waistband was a perilous game of chicken between keeping herself covered and hiking them up so far her ass was half hanging out. She felt oddly cold and exposed, alternately tugging her shirt down to cover her belly and picking at the shoulders to avoid showing too much cleavage. When she was satisfied she wasn't letting anything hang out, she padded out into the hallway on the balls of her feet. She didn't hear any movement, so the alarm clock must not have woken him. She bit her lip and risked sliding Shinji's door open.

He wasn't in his room.

She ducked into the kitchen in a panic. The door to the bathroom was hanging open and it was dark inside. She turned and ran out into the living room, and felt a warm breeze on her face, and a soft breathing sound. She stood and stared at what she saw for a good thirty seconds before she could fully process it. Shinji was out on the balcony, and he'd balanced himself on the railing, standing on his hands. He lowered himself down and pumped himself back up into the air, doing some kind of funny pushup, like an upside down overhead press. She stood dumbly and watched him, in awe of his body; he didn't look like he could be real. Whether he noticed her or simply finished, he started to fall backwards, curled his legs, and executed a perfect dismount, landing in a crouch. He scooped up a towel from the old lawn chair she kept outside and wiped his face. His whole body was shining with sweat.

Oh, and he was in his underwear.

"You're going to get arrested for that," said Misato.

"For what?"

"Public nudity."

"Why does the law demand I wear clothes? It's hot."

"You can say that again," said Misato, eyeing him.

"What?"

"Yeah," Misato sputtered, "You could have closed the door. You're letting my air conditioning out."

Shinji shrugged, and slid the door closed.

"The lock," Misato sighed.

He blinked, then thumbed the latch.

"Why do you lock the door?"

"So no one breaks in?"

He seemed confused by that. "You have a gun."

"Yeah, well, I'm not going to go out inviting trouble, now am I?"

"Breaking into my home would be a mistake."

"Oh," said Misato, putting her hands on her hips. "Feeling protective?"

He scratched the back of his head, and blushed.

"Right," she said, quickly. "Shower up, we have to be at Nerv in an hour. You have a full day of training and synch tests scheduled."

* * *

"I may have made a mistake," Misato said, quietly.

Ritsuko glanced at her. She had little time for small talk. There were a million things that needed doing. She had to ensure that there were no _oddities_ in the regrowth of the cloned tissue used to repair Unit One's hands, then oversee the connection and rigging of the new nerve endings, the sensor systems, over a thousand plates of carefully articulated armor. It wasn't simply a matter of sending an order down to the parts department and sticking the new bits on. It was a deliberate, complex process and it had to be done in record time, every time. She could only pray that after he underwent some training, the boy wouldn't go out of his way to do so much damage to his own Eva.

"What was a mistake?" Ritsuko said idly, rolling her chair to the window.

"Moving him into my house."

"Mmm," said Ritsuko.

She hated the test bodies. It was an emotional, irrational sensation and she'd long ago learned to reject it, to understand it as an unconscious process and file it away in her mind so it no longer concerned her. It was now part of the checklist. She was sure anyone who looked at them felt the same way. Legless, one armed, unarmoed and misshapen, they had an essential wrongness to them that made the technicians that serviced them and the testing area, the 'Pribnow Box', uneasy. Newbies often threw up. When Shinji walked out towards the test plugs, he glanced at them and kept walking as if he were taking a stroll through the park.

She was fascinated to watch him. He picked at his plugsuit, tugging at the arms, and stopped to tug down on the thigh pads, wiggling his hips from side to side. She blinked when she realized why he was doing that. She glanced at Misato from the corner of her eye in time to see her quickly whirl away from the window, blushing like a teenager. Ritsuko leaned on her hand and tapped the button for the microphone on the desk in front of her.

"We don't have all day, Shinji."

He looked up at the booth, and she felt a shiver run down her spine. There was an intelligence behind his eyes, some kind of ongoing calculation. She wasn't sure if he was looking for escape routes or plotting the best way to kill her or trying to figure out the last time she'd bleached her hair. His every glance was heavy, weighted, and when he looked away she felt the same sort of relief she'd feel if a dangerous predator stopped to look at her and then passed her over, moving on to better pray. He was still walking funny when he reached the test plug.

"This will be like piloting. I'll ask you some questions, but mostly I'll be taking readings from the system. You'll just sit there and clear your mind, until it's time to start the simulations."

His voice came back tinny, through the speakers. "I see."

Ritsuko sat back while the system went through the synchronization process. The danger was much lessened when using the test bodies, and so there was little point in directly monitoring each phase of the process. She preferred to run this series herself, though, to ensure that all his baseline readings were established properly. Misato hugged the back of her task chair and spun around like a child.

"Can he hear us?"

"No," Ritsuko sighed.

"I had a dream about him last night," said Misato.

"That's normal," Ritusko said, idly. "Dreams are an outlet for the stresses of daily, life, and-"

"No," Misato cut her off. "I had a _dream _about him."

She made a tiny motion in the air with her fingers.

Ritsuko stared at her. "You're shitting me."

"I had to tell _somebody_," said Misato. "It was driving me nuts."

"I'll bet," Ritsuko smirked. "I hope you're not planning on acting on it."

"Of _course not," _said Misato. "What do you think I am, crazy? The Commander would skin me."

Ritsuko snorted.

"You wouldn't believe what he was doing when I woke up."

Ritsuko laughed quietly and made a small motion with her curled fingers.

"No!" Misato snapped, crossing her arms under her chest. "He was doing handstand pushups on the balcony. In his underwear. On the railing."

"You made that up."

"I did not."

The computer chimed, and Ritsuko glanced at it. "Shit," she breathed.

"What?"

"There must be an error." She thumbed the button. "Shinji, I have to break the synchronization and run it again. Just relax."

There was video feed of his face on the screen. He just sat back in the seat, nonplussed. He didn't seem bothered by the LCL, which was good. He stared blankly, and his biorythm flowed nicely across the monitor. Everything was more than nominal, it was ideal. She'd never seen a human being in better shape in her life.

"What's wrong?" said Misato.

"His synch ratio came up as sixty-two. That's not possible."

"Why not? He's got the suit and the hair thingies on."

"They're A-10 clips," said Ritsuko. "He did have a high unmodified ratio, but it shouldn't be _this _high."

She watched while the system went through the connections, then waited patiently for the ratio to stabilize. The same numbered appeared on the screen in stark white on a green field. Sixty-two percent. She drummed her fingers on the table, and looked at the readings from the nerve clips.

"Theta waves in his frontal lobe," she said, absently. "He's meditating."

"That's good, right?" said Misato.

"We'll see." She pushed the button. "Shinji, we'll start the simulation a little earlier than I planned. This may feel a little weird."

She turned to Misato. "Let's see how he does."

She turned on the large monitor in the corner. A jerky, weightless-looking approximation of Unit One appeared amid a collection of blank obstacles meant to replicate the layout of the city. As the program loaded, more and more detail appeared. Ritsuko typed in the command to allow the MAGI system to perform some of the calculations and the display became almost lifelike. Normally, the tripartite mainframe was kept isolated and buffered from the Evas, but since the simulations only used test bodies, there was little danger of contamination through the connection.

"Is that what he sees?" said Misato.

"Not exactly. He'll see and feel the view from within the cockpit. It's functionally no different from piloting the Evangelion itself."

"The system in Berlin I used for Asuka's training was much more crude," Misato observed. "What kind of a program do you have for it?"

"Basic targeting and operation of the palette rifle for now," said Ritsuko. "We need to get him acquainted with the weapons systems. I can't have him killing the rest of the angels with Unit One's own severed limbs. We have a budget, you know."

"What is this?" said Shinji.

Ritsuko put her finger on the microphone. "It's a simulation, Shinji. We're going to run you through some basic weapons drills and operational procedures. This is how we'll train you to pilot."

"Then begin," said Shinji.

Ritsuko blinked. Misato smirked at her and shrugged.

"Fine. Next to you, you'll see a panel side down, and there will be an array of weapons inside. I want you to pick up the one that looks like a rifle."

She leaned forward and watched Shinji trudge Unit One over to the weapons depot. Something about the way the Eva moved, even in the simulation, bothered her. It was very smooth, practiced. It was like the clips she'd seen of Asuka doing the same thing in her training regime. He seemed to be getting used to the Eva's odd proportions immediately. It made her curious to see if he'd be able to replicate it.

"This is inefficient."

"What?" said Ritsuko.

"The Eva should have on-board weapons. Why do I have to pick up something that can be damaged or dropped? These magazines are too small."

Ritsuko and Misato looked at each other. "It's for versatility."

"A machine is not versatile. Only a human being is versatile. What's this?"

He moved to the close combat section of the weapons deployment building and picked up a long blade with a hilt of almost equal length. The Eva swept it through the air, turned it, and flourished it in its hands. It moved with an eerie, human quality to it, the head tilting as he tested the edge with the Eva's massive hands.

"Good balance. What does it do?"

Ritsuko huffed. "I told you to pick up the rifle. We're going to work on ranged combat first, we need to avoid-"

Shinji spun the progressive sword around in his hand, pitched his arm back, and held it like a javelin. With the Eva's free hand, he pointed at a skyscraper on the other side of the simulated city, then took a bounding step and hurled the sword overhead. It sailed across the city in a tall arc and buried itself to the hilt in its target. The Eva stood to its full height.

"Ranged combat."

Ritsuko frowned, and her brows pinched.

"Let's see you do that under combat conditions."

She typed in the command, and a mockup of the third angel appeared and charged towards him, lifting its claws high. He saw it, ducked under its slash, and elbowed it int he core. It doubled over and he stood up, grabbed it by its broad shoulders, and brought the Eva's knees into its midsection. It stumbled backwards, and he quickly turned, scooped up one of the rifles, slapped a magazine in place, and yanked the charging handle. As the angel got back up, he emptied the gun into it on full auto, peppering the core with shells.

Ritsuko typed a command, and it stood up.

"A firearm has its applications," said Shinji. "This is not one of them."

He pulled another prog sword free of the arming station, spun it around, and speared it through the angel, using both hands to drive it through the core to the hilt. The computer ticked off a win, and the angel vanished.

"Wow," said Misato. "He _is _good. Do we have one of those things?"

"I pulled the budget," said Ritsuko. "A sword? Really?"

"What does this button do?" said Shinji.

"It doesn't matter," Ritsuko huffed, rubbing her forehead. "We need to complete the palette rifle program."

Shinji ignored her, held the blade out, and thumbed the switch. The blade hummed, the edge fuzzing, as though out of focus. He tentatively touched it to the roof of one of the mock skyscrapers and it sent out a shower of sparks and a crack ran down through the structure.

"I like this."

"We don't even _have_ one of those," said Ritsuko.

"Then get one."

Ritsuko sucked in a breath. "Pick up the damned rifle. Now."

Shinji looked at her, or rather, the Eva looked at her, _right at her_, and even though it was a simulation, she felt a creeping sense of unease. He returned the weapon to the rack, picked up the rifle, and quickly, deftly changed out the magazine, ejected an empty casing and let the bolt fly home.

"What happens if I miss?"

"What?" said Ritsuko.

"If I miss. Aren't there people in these buildings?"

"They shouldn't be," Ritsuko growled, testily. "If they have any sense they'll have evacuated when the alarm sounded."

"And if they didn't? Or there isn't enough warning?"

"If you don't kill the angel they're all dead anyway."

"Why?"

Her breath caught. "That's classified."

He put the rifle back in the rack and started going over the other weapons. "You say the sword does not exist. Why is it here?"

"Those weapon designs are a ridiculous extravagance and I have to budget for repairs to the Eva and the other needs of the program. We don't have money for some arms manufacturer's vanity project. We need quick, clean, efficient kills. The rifle and the prog knives should be all you need."

"And how many foes have you slain?"

"What?" Ritsuko snapped, her voice growing heated. "I have an MD and a PhD in engineering. I think I-"

"I have slain and enemy and felt its lifeblood flow over my fingers," said Shinji. "I am not a soft city person like the rest of you. I am alive today because I was able to kill to fill my belly. I know killing."

He lifted a much larger weapon out of the rack. "What is this?"

Ritsuko was fuming. She could feel heat in her cheeks, and he fingernails were trailing across the desk. "That's the rocket launcher," she growled.

"Good," he said, and picked up another one. "This?"

The weapon looked like a long tube, under which was slung a cylindrical, rotating magazine. It didn't have a stock, it was meant to be fired from the hip, at close range.

"Flachette launcher," said Ritsuko. "Like a shotgun."

"This?" said Shinji, pulling out a short, stubby launcher with a wide tube, articulated to break and load in the middle.

"Grenade launcher."

"Define 'grenade.'"

"Sub-kiloton non-nuclear munition. You can't use that in the city."

Shinji broke the launcher in the middle, pulled a shell out of the depot, and slid it home. In one motion he slapped it closed, turned, and aimed it one-handed at the building where his thrown sword was still impaled. When he pulled the trigger the launcher rolled up with a meaty thump, there was a flash, and a good city block was wiped out in the airbust, flattened as a pixelated digital mushroom cloud rose up from the point of impact.

"I like this one. What's this?"

The virtual Unit One knelt, and he hefted a much larger weapon. Like the flechette launcher, it was designed for hip fire. Six barrels spun around a central pivot, jutting out from an mechanically actuated action at the rear that stuck out behind the handle. A belt of ammunition ran to a pack, meant to be hefted and set on the Eva's back, above the umbilical. Shinji swept it around and pulled the trigger, spraying the buildings around him with fire. Unlike the kinetic slugs fired by the palette rifle, the munitions from the chaingun were mass reactive, and once they broke the surface of the structures, they exploded, blowing out the windows.

"I _like _this one."

Ritsuko forced her fists to unclench. "Can I get you anything else?" she snapped.

"An axe. I want an axe."

Ritsuko stood up and walked away from the console, scrubbing her hands through her hair.

"Rits?" said Misato. "You okay?"

She sighed, and straightened. "How am I supposed to work with him like this?"

"Rits," said Misato. "He killed a bear. With a sword. I think he knows what he's doing."

"So you think I should give him what he wants?"

Misato shrugged. "I think we should consider working with the pilot to devise our tactics instead of treating him like he's part of a machine. If he was just some kid off the street, that'd be one thing, but he seems pretty competent with hand to hand combat. I've seen some pretty well trained people that wouldn't be able to stand up to him."

Ritsuko eyed her. Then she looked at the screen. Shinji was swinging the chaingun around wildly, cutting a swath of destruction through the city. Ritsuko ran to the console and yanked the microphone off the desk.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm bored."

"Enough of this. You'll be Katusragi's problem for the rest of the day."

* * *

Shinji breathed the dense, foul tasting liquid, waiting calmly for instruction. Annoying the Akagi woman, he realized, was something of an error, but it was _fun_. He returned the heavy weapon to its carriage and watched as the mock buildings he'd knocked over restored themselves, forming a virtual layout of the city. Misato appeared in front of him in a jerk video feed of her head and shoulders. She had a headset on, and touched her finger to the side.

"Combat training!" she said brightly. "Defend yourself."

She tapped a few keys. "While we're at it, let's make sure you only have access to weapons that physically exist, okay?"

Shinji shrugged, and felt the groaning vibration as the Eva shrugged with him. He turned in a lazy circle, watching for whatever surprise she might throw at him. He kept his feet wide, positioned in a half crouch with his arms out for balance. He still felt unweildy; the Eva's design was heavy at the top and on the back, and he had to hunch to keep his balance. He would need to get used to that as quickly as possible. He continued turning, waiting for the inevitable attack.

He looked up just in time to see a virtual copy of the creature he'd fought before dropping straight out of the sky onto his head. He yelped and danced out of the way as it crashed into the ground beside him. The building nearest the impact groaned and leaned, the glass shell cracking and shattering. Shinji dug his fingers into the side of the structure and pulled it the rest of the way over, dropping it on the angel, and then trotted back, light on his feet. The creature pushed out from under the rubble, dust and debris sliding from its back as it stood up, and charged.

Shinji watched it, first. It was proportioned differently from a human, and that had tripped him up before. It had longer arms and it used them, keeping out of reach while slashing at him with its claws. He knew it meant to grapple with him and use the impact weapons in its arms, so kept out of reach, with an eye towards the cable trailing from his back. If he could get rid of that somehow, he'd have a better position. As it was, he had to take care to defend it and keep from tripping over it at the same time.

"Aww," Misato cooed in his ear, "What's the matter, tough guy? Scared?"

Shinji ground his teeth and let the thing hit him. It pulled a long gash in his leg with its claws, but it gave away the advantage. It was off balance, pitched forward to put power into the stroke, and now that it was committed, he had only to turn its momentum against it. He seized the offending limb with both of his hands and turned, rolling the creature forward, until he was behind it, then reached up and pulled the knives from his shoulder pylons. He turned the blades underhanded, buried them in the thing's back, and used them as grips to pull himself up onto it. It continued to pitch forward, and he had it pinned.

"Not bad," Misato taunted, "But you have to get the core to kill it."

The angel struggled under him. He sat up and looked at it clinically, then grabbed one of the knives and started digging. It struggled and failed as he peeled away its back carapace, and using both hands, ripped out its virtual spine. Once he'd thrown a few of the organs aside, he could see the rear part of the shining red sphere, and plunged its knife into it. The creature turned int a pixelated white mass and vanished, leaving him to fall awkwardly onto the pavement.

"Is that what it truly looked like?"

"As far as I know," said Misato.

"Are you sure?"

"After I killed it, was it dissected?"

"I guess, you'd have to talk to-"

"I want to see it."

"I'm not sure that's possible, Shinji."

His jaw set. "More."

She shrugged and typed. Another version of the creature appeared, and like the one before it, and the one after, he killed it. It was quicker this time. Its movements became predictable, and by the third one, he would simply wait for a vulnerability in its pattern of attack, jab his blade into the core, and get out of the way while it fell.

"This is getting boring to watch," Misato mused.

"Will the next one be like this?"

"I don't know. We really don't have any idea what the next one will be like."

"Then there is no purpose to this."

Misato sighed. "Okay, I'm pulling you out. Sit tight."

The first thing to happen was the loss of awareness of piloting the Eva. His second set of senses dulled as the simulation ended and he felt the numbed, truncated extremities of the thing they called the _test body_, a pale shadow of the Evangelion itself. Try as he might to deny it, he enjoyed the sense of power that came with boding himself to the machine. It was exhilarating, feeling so much power under his control, and yet it worried him. He meditated on this as the synchronization ended, the LCL drained from around him, and he shivered involuntarily. The plug jolted him as it slid out of the test body, and he was left to open the hatch himself. His foot slipped a little as he stepped out. He'd have to remember that; the feet of these suits were not designed for traction.

There was a camera watching him. No attempt was made to hide it, and he heard it whirring as it swept across the room to follow him, although it stopped moving once he'd walked past it. In the locker room, he found that when the suit deflated, the weight of the LCL that soaked it made it easy to strip off. Lacking instruction regarding what to do with it, he left it on the floor in the shower. Once he'd cleaned the foul smelling liquid from his body and hair, he went to dress. He found the clothes he'd worn that morning replaced with identical ones in plastic wrappers.

The shoe still made him uncomfortable.

Misato was waiting for him outside. She adjusted the collar of his shirt for some reason, then bounced all the balls of her feet.

"Well," she said, "You did a good job. You should be proud of yourself."

"There is no pride in defeating an inferior opponent."

Misato rolled her eyes. "Come on. We're going shopping."

"What is 'shopping'?"

She smiled at him. There was something unsettling about it.

* * *

Misato looked around the cleaned apartment. She was surprised by how industrious Shinji was. She didn't expect anything like this from him, considering how he'd lived his life so far. It seemed that the modern world wasn't as confusing and frightening as she'd feared it might be. She moved through the kitchen, almost confused herself by the expanses of clean countertop and empty floor and the fact that she had actual clean dishes. She'd abandoned the notion of using pots and pans not long after occupying her flat in the first place, and since then the sink had piled up with a small collection of them that had developed their own ecosystem. She was thrilled, until she opened the refrigerator.

It had only taken him two weeks, which was a miracle in itself.

"What did you do with my food?" she called.

"I got rid of it."

"What's this stuff?"

"Food," said Shinji.

He'd replaced her hearty supply of instant food, the pinnacle of modern culinary engineering, with a seemingly endless supply of packaged chicken breasts, various meats, cheeses, eggs, vegetables, all of the sorts of things she generally avoided eating. She moaned as she poked through it. The freezer was worse. He'd cleaned it out of her supply of frozen dinners and bought… well, ice cream wasn't _that_ bad, she thought. He hadn't done anything to her beer, either, but he'd thrown out all of her canned coffee. There was milk in her fridge.

Shinji walked into the kitchen, shirtless as usual, finishing the last of a tall glass of milk as he did. His eyes practically rolled back in his head.

"You like that stuff?"

"Protein," he mused, filling the emptied glass with water.

"Sit down, will you?"

He shrugged and sat at the table. She sat opposite him, focusing hard on looking him in the eye and nowhere else. To her infinite amusement, he seemed to be doing the same. She spotted his gaze crawling down over her collarbone and resisted the urge to deliberately shift and drag her loose t-shirt a little lower to show some extra cleavage. She resisted the urge to cover up, too. Something about the way he looked at her made her feel like showing off and yet made her feel modest at the same time. It was almost uncomfortable.

She opened a beer and took a sip.

"I've enrolled you in school."

"Why?"

"It's not healthy for you to spend all your time with me, and now that your initial trials and tests are done, we don't have anything for you to do all day."

"But I like you."

She smiled in spite of herself. "That's nice, Shinji, but you need to be around your peers. People your own age."

He looked at the table. He looked down her shirt a little, too, but mostly at the table. "I never thought of that before. What are they like?"

"What, you mean teenagers? They're, um, not like you."

"Is that all?"

She sighed. "I can't, well, I don't really know. I didn't go to school until I was a little older than you are now. I had… problems."

His eyes narrowed. "What sort of problems?"

"I don't want to talk about it," said Misato. "It's… bad memories."

"I see. Did someone hurt you?"

She looked at him. He wasn't oggling her anymore. His eyes took on that strange cast they sometimes did, where he became too serious for his age. His jaw was set.

"No," she said, quietly. "Not someone, something. I'll tell you about it sometime, but it's not a good time right now."

She took another drink of beer.

"You'll have a cell phone. If you have any problems or feel uncomfortable, just call and I'll have you taken out. It'll be a huge adjustment, but I think you need it."

She looked him up and down. "You'll be a hit with the girls, trust me."

He blinked. "Why?"

She blushed, and hid behind her beer can. She took a deep gulp. She needed a buzz. "You'll see."

"As you say. What must I do?"

"I'll drop you off at school tomorrow. After that, you'll walk. You need to be up early- they start pretty early in the morning. I'm sure you can handle that."

"I think so," he said.

"You just go in a room and sit there while teachers talk about stuff. Just try not to let anybody provoke you or anything. Like I said, we can find an alternative if it doesn't work out for you, but I think you'll like it. You're an interesting person."

"I'm an interesting person?"

"Uh, yeah," said Misato. "I guess."

She kicked her feet against the floor, making tiny squeaks as her toes touched the linoleum. "So what's for dinner, mister 'I should cook'."

He looked at her flatly. "Chicken and boiled spinach."

"Great," she sighed. "At least I don't have to cook it."

She sat and watched him do his thing. He kept the counter meticulously clean, and worked with a sort of mechanical precision as he set up the pans and poured the water and cut up the meat. She was a little disturbed how easily and deftly he handled the knife, spinning it and moving it around without even looking at it. The food didn't smell bad, per se, it just didn't smell like anything at all. It didn't take long to make, and soon she was staring at a plate of pale white meat and leaves. She opened another beer.

The chicken tasted like chicken, and nothing else. She fished out her cannister of curry pepper from the cupboard and shook it all over everything. Shinji watched her as he did, munching on a leaf that hung from between his lips. She wasn't sure if he was taking insult to his cooking or checking her out, or both. She bounced back int her seat and ate hungrily. A little flavor made all the difference. She washed it down with her beer and quickly moved on to the third. Shinji cleaned his plate and almost demurely wiped his lips clean with a napkin.

"Why do you drink that?"

"It's good," said Misato. "Want some?"

He shrugged, and held out his hand. She started to pass him the can, then stopped. "You can have your own, but just one, okay? You're too young to drink too much."

She had to remind herself of that as she stood up. She downed her beer all at once, ready for another herself, and swayed a little on her feet. Something curious struck her as she was pulling out a new pair of cans- he'd moved all the beer to the bottom shelf. She stood up, hip-checked the door closed, and turned to see him staring at the ceiling. She glanced back at the refrigerator and shook her head.

"Here," she said.

He opened his can and sniffed it, and frowned. Misato opened hers and held it up. "Chug," she said.

"Excuse me?"

She tipped her beer back and started gulping it down. Shinji took her meaning and joined her, finishing just after he did. Blinking, he stared at the empty can and gingerly put it on the table. He weaved a little in his seat, and stared at her, wide-eyed. He ran his fingers up and down the can, squeezing it a little, and shook his head, as if just waking up.

"I see," he said.

She stood up. "I said just one for you."

She swayed a little more than she wanted when she walked to pick up the cans and toss them in the recycling bin, and for some reason, her inability to balance herself manifested itself entirely in her hips. She nodded her head towards the living room.

"Let's watch TV."

Shinji shrugged. He did that a lot.

He followed her into the living room. She yawned, bounced onto the couch, and folded her legs, leaning back into the cushions. He glanced at her and sat down, not on the far side but sort of in the middle, and leaned back, imitating her. She yawned heavily. A moment later, he did the same. She picked up the remote and flicked on the television. He stared at it in awe, even though she'd had it on before.

"This is a lot for you to take in, isn't it?" she said.

He nodded.

She finally settled on something, some old movie. She didn't pay much attention, and ended up nodding backwards, her breathing turning shallow as she drifted through the haze of beer into a haze of sleep. She felt Shinjis' fingers ghost over her hand as he took the remote, lingering there just a moment, as if they wanted to stay longer. As she fuzzed into the strange hyper-awareness between waking and sleep, she could feel him at her side, a presence, drawn to her somehow. She cracked her eyes and saw he was paying more attention to her than the television as he flipped the channels, and turned a little in the seat.

When she woke up, it was dark outside. She pitched forward and shakily stood up. Shinji jumped up beside her, grabbing her arm even though she didn't need the support. She playfully pushed him off.

"Not on the first date."

He blinked.

"Kidding," she sighed.

"What's a date?"

She eyed him. "Are you sure you're from the planet Earth?"

"Yes," he shrugged.

She huffed, and stumbled towards her bedroom. "Get some sleep. Up early for school, got it?"

He nodded, and headed towards his room.

She stopped with her hand on the wall, and stood in the door to her room. "The beer thing was pretty clever," she said, and then slid the door shut behind her.

* * *

Toji paced the classroom. He was early, and he was early because he hadn't spent the night at home. He felt tired and he felt grimy, having changed into his school uniform before going to the hospital that night. He'd spent most of the time sleeping slumped in an angular, uncomfortable chair while the prostrate form of his sister remained motionless inside the oxygen tent. He hadn't heard her voice since the day of the attack, when he'd heard her crying out as the rush of people into the shelter pulled her hand out of his. He still had bruises from the guards shoving him through the doors as he frantically sought her in the tide, and heard her voice drowned out by a chorus of others. So, you see, it was his fault.

He needed to hit someone. Badly.

Kensuke was a tempting target.

He ran up to Toji, his overloaded backpack swinging wildly, throwing him off balance, his laptop cradled under one arm, fumbling to keep his glasses in place. He was panting, as though from a long run, and he shrugged out of the bag as quickly as he could and put the laptop on the desk with uncharacteristic lack of concern. He was practically jumping up and down.

"What?" Toji growled, flopping into his seat. He put his head on his hand and fought the fatigue that welled in him.

"There's a transfer," said Kensuke, "A new student! I hear Ayanami is coming back, too!"

Toji sighed. Kensuke was infatuated with the pale girl with the weird hair and the sour attitude, mostly because he could project all kinds of weird fantasies onto her. He was convinced she was an robot pilot and his computer was full of covert pictures of her. He called it research, but most of them were angled up her skirt, in search of an illusive glimpse of the white cotton promise hidden within. So far, his search had been fruitless, and he was bumping up against Toji's tolerance- he didn't want to be with Kensuke when Hikari caught him outside the girl's locker room or skulking in a stairwell with a skyward camera.

To record the day's momentous events, he'd brought his video camera. Toji resisted the urge to slap it out of his hands as he walked around the room, panning the camera over everything and muttering to himself. There was a commotion in the hallway, and Kensuke moved with surprising stealth to the back of the room and took his seat, tripoding the camera on his desk with his arms. He looked through the viewfinder. When the transfer walked in, he leaned away from the camera itself to look with his own eyes.

"Is that a new gym teacher?" he said quietly.

Toji watched him. "He's wearing a uniform like ours. I don't think so."

He was weird, that was for sure. His hair was close cropped; it looked almost military, and he was _built_, no one he'd ever seen in school was that fit. He wasn't actually wearing a uniform, but a man's shirt and slacks that matched the simple white shirt black pants combo the school mandated. From the look of him, boy's clothes wouldn't fit. The sleeves of the shirt strained around his arms and the seat of his pants was so tight it pulled on the pockets, exposing tiny white slivers of the inside of his pockets. He wasn't any taller than anyone else, though, and he didn't look any older. His fingers and his face contrasted with the rest of him, almost feminine. There was a knot of girls at the door staring at him as he walked to the center of the classroom and sat down.

Some body Toji knew only as an athlete of middling ability walked up to the transfer. "That's my seat."

The transfer looked at him flatly. "Wrong."

The boy blinked and edged away from him. There were plenty of seats, anyway. There was something about the way the new guy moved. He looked around all the time, stopped to study the windows and the door, and he tested the desk, pulling on the top until it creaked before he pulled out his laptop. He held it like a book, fumbled with it, and finally glanced at Kensuke before he put it down on the desk and found the latch to open it. He looked around the room constantly, and the few times his gaze settled on Toji, he instantly felt like he was being weighed, judged, held up against some kind of standard. It was unnerving, and it was insulting.

Toji's fists clenched on the desks.

A second tumult started when Ayanami walked in. It was mostly boys, Kensuke included, that watched her. Toji felt creeped out by the attention. They stared at her even more when she was hurt, like today, her arm in a sling and a bandage wrapped around her head awkwardly in a way that made tufts of her funny colored hair stick out in all directions. Toji got reprimanded about wearing his track suit enough, it made him wonder how she got away with dying her hair _blue_.

Hikari was busy herding everyone into the room, but even she stole glances at the new guy. When the old teacher came in she did her stand-bow-sit thing, and everyone did it but the new kid and Ayanami. They had that in common. Toji slumped in his chair. He ignored the lecture- the old man was going on about Second Impact again, just like he did every day. He'd get some work sheets, fill them out at home, and listen to his father complain about how the school system had declined after Second Impact. Second Impact was all he ever heard about. It made him sick.

He watched the new guy. He ran his fingers over the case of the computer and poked at it like it might bite him, nervously glancing to the side as he typed in his login information, using his index fingers. He spotted a few of the other students touch-typing and started awkwardly imitating them, staring at the keys the whole time. Kensuke looked over the shoulder of the girl in front of him, watching the new kid's screen. He didn't even seem to care about Ayanami at the moment. He shouldered his camera so it had a view of the new kid's back and his screen, and hit enter. A chat window bloomed on the new kid's screen, and he rolled back in his seat in alarm. That earned him a few glances.

"I'm asking him if he's the robot pilot," Kensuke whispered.

"What the hell for?"

"Look at him," said Kensuke. "He's got to be some kind of soldier or something. I bet he knows martial arts. Do you think he knows martial arts?"

Toji palmed his face. "He's not a robot pilot."

Kensuke turned the laptop towards him. "Oh, yeah?"

A single word blinked on Kensuke's screen.

Yes.

The classroom went mad. The only person who didn't react was the old teacher, who carried on, his lecture droned out by the shouting. Even Ayanami turned away from staring out the window and blinked her one red eye. Toji was always unnerved by her stare. The new kid looked bewildered as the entire class crowded around him, barking questions about the robot and the piloting of it. The girls pressed closest, shoving the boys out of the way. One of them _smelled _him. Only Hikari maintained any semblance of self control, although she looked like she was about to start beating them all back with her clipboard by the time one of the principals and the school nurse barged in and restored order. Kensuke gloried in recording it all.

Toji's desk creaked audibly as his knuckles went white. His leg was shaking.

"Hey," Kensuke said after the furor died down, "You okay, man?"

Toji didn't answer. He folded his bottom lip under his teeth hissed.

He spent the rest of the morning staring daggers at the new guy and watching the clock. When it was time for lunch, he was out of his seat before he was even dismissed, earning him a salvo from Hikari that he ignored. The transfer student wandered out of the classroom with the others, ignoring the small knot of students that formed around him and quietly questioned him as he walked outside into the back yard, where the students ate in the open air. When Toji stepped out of the shadow and into the sun, he squinted.

"Hey," he called.

The others saw him, and cleared away from the new kid in a hurry. For his part, he turned slowly, doing that weird everywhere-glancing thing, like he was planning something. His movements became even more liquid, more fluid, graceful, even. He walked on the balls of his feet and his movements were those of a cat in the day, back high, proud. He stared Toji down with a gaze that nearly made him reconsider his present course of action, until he saw in his minds eye a small shape hidden in a plastic tent, and the cold hiss of machines.

"You're the pilot?"

"That's right."

"Your piece of shit robot put my sister in the hospital."

"How?"

"You knocked a building on her!"

His head tilted to the side. "Why was she outside? There are shelters."

Toji stalked closer to him, puffing out his chest. He was taller, at least. He had that. "This is for my sister."

He threw a punch. It was wild and he thought, at first, that he missed because his vision blurred from the tears, but the transfer simply wasn't there. He did a funny thing, put his foot out to the side as if to trip someone, then shifted his entire body onto one heel, moving out of the way so fast that Toji stumbled past him and he heard the crowd around them jeering.

"Fuck you!" Toji shouted, his voice so tight it started to crack. He took another wild swing, and missed. "Hold still and take it like a man."

The next hit connected. The transfer's head snapped to the side. Toji thought that he'd been the one to be hit. His whole arm hurt, and pain lanced up his knuckles through his wrist. His hand had folded back from the blow, and his hand was tingling. He turned and threw a punch with his off hand, and the transfer caught him somehow, easily, holding him by the wrist. When it was over, he was standing there with his arm turned at a funny angle, and he thought it would break. Struggling only made it worse. His eyes teared up, and he made little pained sounds, almost like sobs.

"It was the angel that did your kin hurt, no matter the cause of it," he said, very softly. He released Toji, then spun him by the shoulder and dragged him forward by the collar. "I killed it. Others will come. I will kill them, too."

He stared into Toji's eyes, and Toji realized he'd made a grave mistake. It was like standing outsider a panther's enclosure at the zoo, and locking gazes with a predator. He was out of his league.

"I will kill them all."

Toji shook himself loose and stood there. The transfer looked at him. "You have a warrior spirit. What is your name?"

"Toji Suzahara," he gasped, not quite knowing why.

"I am Shinji Ikari."

"Hit me back," said Toji.

Kensuke did that look-but-not-through-the-camera thing again. Of course the little twerp had recorded all this.

"That would be unwise."

"You have to. Balance the scales."

Shinji shrugged, and his hand lanced out so fast that Toji didn't realize he'd been struck until the world went white and he spun around on his feet, nearly falling down. He didn't even wind up or telegraph it, he just did it. Toji looked back at him, rubbing his chin.

"Where the hell did you learn to fight like that?"

Shinji smiled quietly to himself, but said nothing. He paled as he heard the sound, glancing off to the side. The evacuation alarm wound up in the distance, first an angry dirge, and then a mounful wail. Toji's throat tightened. He looked off towards the city, and then back towards the door. Shinji was already moving, running not towards the shelter but the front of the school. He was as fast as a track runner, and more agile. He vaulted the fence with ease.

Kensuke grabbed Toji's shirt. "Hey," he said, "I have an idea. Oh, and your lip is bleeding."

* * *

Misato hurried onto the bridge, tugging her jacket down. It was pointless, she knew, but she felt the need to look official. Sometimes, she missed the discipline of the armed forces. These paramilitary types were too sloppy and inefficient, at least when it came to doing something important. Once she put on the role of Director of Combat Operations and walked out on her deck, it was all business. She stood with her feet wide and her fists planted on her hips.

"Status report."

Hyuga looked over his shoulder. "Blue pattern detected. It will approach the northern defensive grid in two minutes."

"Status of the grid?"

"Still mostly down."

She huffed. "The pilots?"

"Both have been retrieved and are en-route. Unit One is being prepped for launch."

"Let me see the angel."

At the front of the cavernous space where the MAGI were house and operational command took place, there was a holographic projection- it was capable of producing a detailed map of the city, or most often, projecting a massive display from the camera system in the middle of the air. She saw a rumor of the angel first, dust and foliage and debris rising up ahead of it. She sucked in a breath when she saw that it was flying- she hadn't expected that. It moved through the air without apparent means of locomotion, slowly shifting, serpentine. It was a blend of some monstrous insect and a snake, undulating through the skies. Its head was enormous and armored, if it was a head at all, like a battering ram, and flailing beside it were trailing, flesh appendages that glowed with their own light. Tiny readings appeared on the screen. They were hot.

"Has it shown any hint of a ranged attack?"

"We'll see in a moment," said Hyuga.

A batter popped up. Folded on itself, it looked like a blank gray building, until it unfurled and revealed a series of massive guns and missile batteries that fired a streaking salvo at the creature's belly. The munitions flowered harmlessly against its AT-Field, not even touching it, bursting in air. With a sort of contempt, it swept one of its whips through the body of the battery and cleanly sliced it. The top half shifted slightly before the ammunitions stores went up in a bright orange flare that consumed what remained of the defensive emplacement. The angel swept past it, offering not a moment's further effort.

"So," said Misato. "Close combat. Good."

She felt the Commander's eyes on her, but ignored it.

Ibuki looked over her shoulder. "Tech division reports Evangelion ready for launch."

Shinji appeared on a side screen, staring grimly into the camera. He flexed slightly, tugging against his suit. Some tiny part of Misato's brain that was supposed to be shut off right now couldn't help but notice how his chest stretched the material as he breathed.

"Pilot Ikari," she said quickly, blinking to force herself to concentrate. "This will be a close combat operation-"

He grinned ferally.

"-you _will _follow my orders, understood?"

His grin faded into an easy smile, but he said nothing. Misato watched him as she said, "Launch."

The look on his face was priceless. No one was _that _stoic.

The main screen switched to a view of the Evangelion rocketing from the launch tube. It bounced to a halt, and before he was ordered, Shinji yanked free, almost ripping the restraining bolts loose, and jogged into the city, the Eva hunched like an animal. For a moment, she was speechless; the way it moved was too smooth, too human. She glimpsed the unpainted primer gray armor on his forearms and reminded herself what would happen if she didn't keep him in check. She couldn't let him injure himself like that again.

"It's coming up on your left. I want you to get a rifle."

Surprisingly, he did as he was bit, sprinting to an arming station to pull out the heavy palette gun. He glanced at the tower as if he expected the weapons from the simulation to have manifested there, somehow. Misato was pressuring Ritsuko to give him what he wanted, but it was slow going, and after the repairs Unit One would surely need after today… she shook her head for focus.

"Soften it up before you engage. Controlled bursts, remember to-"

He ignored her, and charged headlong through the first open path towards the creature that appeared to him. He took the palette gun by the barrel with both hands and swung it, bashing the enemy across its armored head with it like a club. Misato's stomach clenched, and she could feel the Commander at her back staring daggers into her. The angel snapped to the side, and he hit again. This time, the stock of the rifle dented and twisted, until it was useless as a club. Shinji grabbed the angel by the head and twisted it, trying to drag it into the ground.

In its writhing, it flattened an entire city block.

"Not in the city!" Misato shouted, "Fall back, and-"

The angel bashed him aside with a flick of its head, and he reached out with his left arm to grapple with it again. The light-whips flashed around him and curled around his forearm. The LCL in front of his face frothed as he screamed in pain and the angel's appendages dug into the armor, wisps of smoke curling from the Eva's arm as it jerked Shinji around and slammed him through an armor panel. It loosened one appendage to wrap around the Eva's helmet, and there was an audible crack.

"Open fire with defensive batters nine and twenty-six," Misato said calmly.

Hyuga turned around. "What? You'll hit the Eva!"

"It'll kill him if we don't disengage it. Do it."

Hyuga looked at her askance, then turned around and did as he was bid. The turrents popped up and opened fire, the shells battering the creature and the Eva both, tossing them around as though they were caught outside in a strong wind. Orange light flickered around the Eva's body as the shells hit. He must have been activating the AT-Field and molding it to his body, maybe instinctively. She watched his face on screen. There was a thin streamer of blood running down his forehead, and his eyes had shrunk down to pinpricks, as if he was staring into a bright light. She swallowed.

"Pilot status?"

"He's in trouble," said Maya. "Heart rate and blood pressure elevated, EEG abnormal, and the synchrograph is _weird._"

"Put the MAGI on it. Get Director Akagi up here, too."

Maya nodded.

"Shinji," Misato said, very calmly. "Retreat. That's an order."

He looked at the camera, at her, with his too-blue eyes. "No."

He yanked his arm free, stripping away armor in the process, and the Eva's arm was spurting blood for a moment before the flow staunched itself. With the same arm he batted the angel aside, and with both hands he wrestled with it, wrapping his arms around it, and drug it around the rubble. Misato motioned for Hyuga to cease firing and the explosions stopped, and the angel and the Eva struggled against one another. It reared up, pulling the Evangelion with it, and slammed it back down. Shinji rolled out of the way before a scoring stroke of its whips hit him and instead, they sliced into the pavement, cutting an overpass into neat slices. He ducked behind an arms tower and the angel cut it twice, and the pieces slid apart in a blooming cloud of dust. Shinji kept moving, circling around it, and it was too slow to turn. He had it by the tail.

Misato saw a small structure on the top of the creature, where its body broadened into a battering ram. The tiny, bony mask must have been its real face; like a butterfly, the marks on its back were a false face. It was almost fascinting, but the creature was staring at Shinji as he grabbed its tail and fiercely torqued its body. It was thinking.

"Shinji," she said again, her voice heating. "Damn it, I said pull back, we need to-"

The angel lashed out, and severed the umbilical. On the screen, Shinji started, and spotted the timer that lit into being beside his head. It was running faster than normal from the exertion. He'd have a minute at most. It moved with lighting speed. The light-whips impaled through the Eva's middle, and Shinji screamed again, but it was a scream of rage. He took hold of one of the coiled whips, biting through the pain, and simply tore it away from the angel's body, and it fell back from him.

All hell broke loose. The Evangelion made a sound, a strange noise like a groan, and Shinji let go of the creature, dashed past it, and then scrambled over it, on top of one of the buildings. It perched there, folded in a crouch, elbows and knees poking out from its sides. The angel turned and with those whips, it lashed out, unmaking the building under his feet even as he jumped at it. Misato shouted for him to retreat but he ignored her. On the screen, his face was a mask of pain- he was bleeding heavily from his hairline now, and his lips were back over his bare teeth. He looked like fury itself. He jumped clear over it, rolled the Evangelion, and Misato winced. It wasn't meant to do that.

Somehow, he came up intact, grabbed the severed umblical, and she started to cry out to him that it wouldn't work, but he didn't try to reattach it. Instead, he looped it around and around his wounded arm, like coils of rope. The angel banked around and came at him again, picking up speed. He crouched and sprung into a leap. The Eva sailed impossibly through the air and he slid along the angel's back, pressing flat to it. He got his fingers under one of the armored segments and pulled it up, wedging his fist in, exposing the slippery flesh underneath, and dug his fingers into that. The thing screamed in pain. He took the cable in his other hand and threw it about the angel, looping it until it pulled tight, and he yanked on it. The beast screamed. It turned wildly in the air, trying to throw him off, and she could see the blood draining from his face. It sliced the cable away to free itself and started powering away form the city. It rose up, and spiraled into the hills. Misato winced; the school wasn't far from there.

The timer went dead. The view from inside the plug fuzzed as the reserves kicked in. She had seconds at most.

"Eject," Misato said sharply. "Pilot eject, it'll kill him if we-"

"No," the Commander said quietly.

Misato whirled around. She was about to say something when Maya screamed.

"The synchrograph! The third stage connections are reversing! The Eva is going berserk!"

"What the _fuck _does that mean?"

The feed from the plug went dead. The Eva threw its head back and the armor over the lower part of the helmet tore to shreds in one great motion, spreading open like a flower of metal, exposing blunt teeth heavy with gore inside. It bellowed in fury, an ancient, alien sound that rattled the floor and shivered through her bones, making her knees week. She realized she was covering her mouth out of sheer instinct. The sound wasn't even coming through the speakers, she could hear it underground. The Commander was on his feet, his thin lips curled into an almost-smile.

The angel bucked under him and the Eva roared and pitched forward, burying the horn on the helmet under the armor plate he'd started pulling up, and pried it loose with a horrid, we tearing sound. The angel shrieked in pain as the Eva opened its jaws wide and started chewing on it, tearing loose chunks of flesh and swallowing them. A hologrammatic diagram of the Eva appeared to her side and flared with a dozen red points.

"What the hell is that?" said Misato.

"Microfissures in the armor," said Maya. "It's like the Eva is expanding somehow!"

The Evangelion moved like an animal, pulling its head up to tear new bites of white, slipper flesh free, muscle fibers and viscera training through the air around it as it opened its jaws too-wide to admit fresh gulps. It shuddered and moved with a grim purpose, as though suddenly regaining itself. It began tearing into the angel's body with one hand; it must have broken the other in the impact on the mountainside. It sniffed, actually stopped and snuffed in a great breath, before it dug its head into the angel's body and bobbed back up, holding a red sphere in its mouth. Misato's breath caught. The angel's body went slack, and the Evangelion rolled to the side, but remained mostly upright. Its jaws tensed, then bit down. The core crushed between its teeth, dibbling down over its jaws even as it reared back to take a hearty swallow.

"Pattern blue terminated," Hyuga said, dumbly.

The Eva slumped on its side. "Plug ejecting," Maya said, confused. "Pilot vitals lost."

"Get a recovery crew out there. _Now._"

* * *

Shinji's eyes blinked open, and he immediately pressed them shut again. The glare of the hospital lights assailed him for the second time in as many weeks, and he clenched his teeth. When he felt the bandages wound around his left arm and hand, he realized why he was there. It was always too bright in this place and too cool, and the air stank of chemicals. He hated it. He sat up, and the monitor next to him beeped angrily. He waved at it as though it were an insect.

Hands gently pressed him back down by the shoulders, and somehow he knew Misato purely by her scent, and for that reason only didn't break her arm.

"Easy there, tough guy. You need to rest."

She looked tired. Her hair was frizzed and there were red marks on her cheeks, and her nose was raw. He felt out of sorts and his head felt heavy, and instinct guided him to lean up and touch his lips to her chin. It was fatigue that held him down, but her cheeks deepened with color. She must have read his look.

"What happened?"

"Well," she said, "You killed it. You also disobeyed my direct orders. Repeatedly. I'm lucky I still have a job."

He blinked. "What?"

She sighed. "Your insubordination reflects poorly on me, Shinji. The Commander said I'm lucky I'm not facing demotion. Only the fact that you actually killed the damned thing saved my ass."

"I see," said Shinji. "I am glad your ass is safe."

Her eyes narrowed. "That was lame."

He held up his hand so he could see it. It was swathed in bandages, so much that it was a useless nub. He touched his head. There was a patch of gauze taped to his forehead. When he touched his tongue to his lip, he felt stitches. Misato sighed and ran her fingers over his scalp.

"Don't worry about your hand, you'll be fine. The doctors went a little overboard with the bandages. You can have that off in three days."

He wiggled his fingers inside the heavy wrap. They felt fine. He didn't understand why he needed the bandages at all. Against her protests, he sat up, and leaned on his knees. He took a breath, and then swung his legs over the side of the bed.

"Hey!"

"Get me out of here," he said sharply. "I don't like hospitals."

"Put on some pants first," she sighed.

Misato stepped outside while he dressed. He wasn't sure why; it was nothing she had not yet seen. He managed to get his damnable pants up and zipped, but the shirt presented a problem. She poked her head into the room and did the buttons up the front for him, her fingers trembling slightly, though he knew not why. When she did the last button she smoothed the fabric over his chest.

"Great," she said, folding her hands behind her back. "Let's go."

He was silent during the walk out of the infirmary and the car ride back to the apartment. It was long past dusk. He must have been unconscious for hours. He felt new, and strange. His hand itched madly, and every time he looked at the wrap around his fingers, he grew annoyed with it. It flexed easily as he opened and closed his hand, like a mitten. His eyes felt heavy, and leaning against the window of her car, he started to drift off to sleep.

Something assailed his mind. He glimpsed a distant world where there was only darkness over slabs of white stone, geometries alien and strange all around him. He traced the cleanly cut lines of the structures to where they met, but the joining of them made no sense, every angle either too wide or too acute for the planes to be straight, and yet they were. It was as if a circle somehow held more or less than three hundred and sixty degrees, or both at the same time. It was some kind of city in the void, and it was colder than cold. A red sun burned in the sky, too huge and yet too cold, for there was no warmth in this place. He sat bolt upright. Misato grabbed his shoulder. In the distance, he saw a huge white shape. He blinked again, and it was gone.

"What is it?"

"Nothing," he lied, his voice wavering. "Just tired."

She looked at him askance. "We're here."

He got out of the car and walked shakily up the front steps. A glance at the building stuck him odd. No lights were on but Misato's; it seemed the place truly was unoccupied after all. He walked mechanically from the elevator into the apartment and sat down in the center of the couch. Misato shrugged out of her jacket and hung it in the closet, then sat down beside him, almost touching him. She folded her hands and stared at them.

"I have to reprimand you. You were wrong to disobey my orders and you were wrong to-"

"I hate to kill it," he said sharply, rage bubbling through his words. "I hate them."

She looked at him. Without warning, she leaned over haltingly, and touched her lips to his cheek at the curve of his jaw, brushing them against his skin almost gently. Her hair brushed against his neck and the flowery aroma of the covering scent she wore filled his nostrils, sliding over the musky smell of her own sweat and worry beneath. An electric jolt ran through his body and he awkwardly stiffened against the back of the couch.

"Consider yourself reprimanded."

She stood up and offered him her hand. "Come on, you really need to get some rest."

Dumbly, he let her lead him towards his bedroom. She undid his shirt for him. He stared at her all the while, she never met his gaze, looking to the side or at her hand instead.

"I think you can handle the rest yourself."

He could, at that. He shrugged out of his shirt as she closed his door, kicked out of his pants, and curled on the mat. He turned to face the wall, and the last sound he heard before he faded into slumber was the cracking of an opened beer and a heavy gulp, and Misato muttering to herself. Sleep took him like a fall of heavy rocks, and it was deep and dark and full of the whispers of something ancient.

* * *

"The Evangelion," said Ritsuko, "has increased in mass."

Very few people were immune to the sepulchral air of Gendo Ikari's office. This was by design. It was calculated to intimidate. In the case of the present subject, there was an issue of familiarity. She was his second in command and had spent considerable time in the vast dark space under the glow of the Sephira. They had pored over data in one another's presence, and as they saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt. He had also fucked her on the desk on two non-consecutive occasions. That most likely had an impact on her perception of the chamber as well.

His voice echoed in the room. He was not to be fucked with tonight, as it were. "By how much?"

"About two percent. There's stress fractures in the dermal and sub-dermal armor, especially around the chest, arms, legs, and back. Most of the new mass is muscle, some of it is bone. The carapace was heavily damaged in combat and some of the wiring in the restriction harness was fried, but the biological systems are all intact. It's more than healthy, it got bigger and tougher during the battle."

"Can we attribute that to the consumption of the angel's flesh?"

She shrugged. He could see that she was deliberately exaggerating the motion, the effect combined with the low cut of her blouse to make her cleavage more noticeable. She'd gone heavy on the makeup, too. He smirked behind his gloved hands. He enjoyed this game, knowing that his deliberate dismissal of her childish flirtations would make her desire him all the more the next time he deigned to to spend a few hours listening to her idiotic banter before making proper use of her. She was deliciously easy to manipulate.

"I think we can, yes."

"And the actual cause?"

She stiffened. Anything she said other than "I don't know" would be a lie. "I'm working on some hypotheses. I'm waiting for the MAGI to give me some answers before I draw any conclusions.

He smirked. Predictable. She smirked back and fluttered her eyelashes, no doubt thinking he was flirting with her.

"There's something else you should know. The graphs you predicted didn't appear. The berserker state was unlike anything we've seen. The secondary connection was a flatline, it was Shinji… the pilot's graph, and that of the Eva proper, that were all over the map."

Gendo frowned. That was unexpected, to say the least. The pilot's graph should have dropped to near zero during the berserker state. He almost wished the old fool Fuyutsuki was there to help him muddle through the numbers, but the old man's scorched bones were in a box somewhere by now, collected as evidence from the camp where he'd held the boy hostage.

"Sir?" said Ritsuko. "Will there be anything else?"

She cocked her hips to the side, noticeable but not enough to make it obvious, pushed her chest out, drawing in a deep breath as she did. Gendo resisted the urge to smirk again.

"That will be all."

The look of dejection on her face was priceless. She huffed as she turned to leave. He was glad to see her go, and to watch her departure in equal measure. When she was gone, he leaned back, pulled of his glasses, and scrubbed his fingertips over his closed eyes. A tone chimed on his desk, and he snapped forward, folding his hands. The Chairman did not deign to request his sub ordinate's attention, he demanded it.

A circle of white light appeared on the floor, and within it the old bastard flickered into being, his holographic visage forming over the projector like a demon summoned in some hoary alchemist's lab. He leaned forward, his mechanical spine groaning, and pounded a feeble old fist on his desk, somewhere in Munich. Gendo remained fixed, impassive. It pleased him to appear emotionless, and served his purposes.

"Ikari," the Chairman growled.

"Keel," said Gendo, as if addressing an old friend.

The both ignored each other's inane barbs. The old man tended to stick to the point, his one virtue. "I have reviewed the combat footage from the firs two sorties, and the psychological profile your secretary developed."

Gendo viciously suppressed his smirk. The Chairman's insistence on referring to her as his secretary would have sent Ritsuko into a rage.

"And?"

"This is _unacceptable._ There could not be a candidate less suited."

Gendo frowned. "His facade is strong, yes, but it will only lead to a more severe breakdown."

"Not according to the Akagi woman. The report describes his willpower as bordering on superhuman."

Gendo waved a hand dismissively. "She overestimates her own capabilities."

"I am a cautious man," said Keel.

Gendo would have groaned, if his manifold deceptions would have permitted it.

Keel went on. "I am ordering you to make all necessary preparations to execute Case Crimson."

Gendo sat up. "What?"

"Are you deaf, Ikari? Your son's apparent capability will only add to her instability. I have a _resource_ of my own that will only enhance the process when triggered. I will arrange their meeting at once. You will proceed with Crimson as ordered. I will relay further instruction as required."

"As you command," said Ikari.

"The normal Committee meeting will proceed as normal. The details of the Ascension are not within their sphere of influence. Am I clear?"

"Of course," said Gendo.

He leaned back as Keel vanished. He opened a drawer in his desk, and waited for the light inside to blink green, indicating that the Chairman was no longer eavesdropping on him. Then, he burst out laughing.

* * *

_You have been reading_

**The Riddle of Steel: Director's Cut**

_Chapter Three: Welcome to the Jungle_**  
**


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